"By the third quarter of last year, we had secured 55 billion won in overseas orders, accounting for more than 60% of total bookings, strengthening our presence in the global market. We will go beyond being a design house that brokers fabless (chip design) and foundry (contract chip manufacturing) corporations, and transform into an all-around "system semiconductor" company that provides end-to-end support from design to manufacturing, packaging, and testing."
Chief Executive Cho Myeong-hyun of Semifive said this in an interview with ChosunBiz on Dec. 19 at Semifive's headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi. After earning master's and doctoral degrees in semiconductor design from MIT and working at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), Cho founded the semiconductor design house "Semifive" in 2019. Semifive went public on KOSDAQ on Dec. 29, six years after its founding, and recorded a market capitalization of 888.3 billion won as of Jan. 23.
Semifive, unlike other design houses, offers a "design platform" service. Semifive built a platform business that lets customers pick and choose specific services or receive end-to-end support from design through manufacturing, packaging, and testing. It dramatically lowered the entry barrier so that even having only a basic idea for a chip to be developed can lead to mass production.
Until now, design houses had been limited to acting as intermediaries between fabless companies that design chips and foundry corporations that manufacture them. When a fabless company designed a chip, the role was confined to helping the foundry mass-produce it with an optimized process after considering the chip's performance, applications, and input expense.
Cho said, "We expected the market for application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs), which manufacture customized chips that customers need rather than general-purpose chips, to surge," adding, "Our strategy is for Semifive to support corporations so they can develop, in-house, chips that can run the products they want to build, instead of having the performance of finished goods determined by matching them to chips already on the market."
Semifive surpassed 100 billion won in revenue last year, and its cumulative bookings through the third quarter reached 125.7 billion won, exceeding the previous year's 123.9 billion won. Cho said, "Because we help customers directly develop the chips to be embedded in their own products, the conversion rate to mass production is high," adding, "This is a key differentiator of the ASIC business compared with the past, when even if a fabless company completed a chip, no customers appeared and no sales were generated."
Semifive plans to sustain its growth by aggressively targeting overseas markets. Cho said, "As a relatively young company, it took time to build trust in the market," adding, "By partnering with Samsung Electronics and global foundries and successfully completing multiple projects, we built recognition. Overseas bookings now account for more than 60% of total bookings."
Semifive plans to pursue aggressive mergers and acquisitions (M&A) with funds secured through the listing. Cho said, "As chip processes advance, we plan to push M&A to internalize next-generation technologies needed for this and to strengthen our design capabilities," adding, "We also plan to hire talent to meet demand." The following is a Q&A with Cho.
— Listed in six years and signaled a turnaround to profit in seven. What is the secret to the rapid growth?
"I believe it was possible because Semifive lowered the entry barrier to chip development. Even if a customer lacks design capabilities, Semifive supports everything from design to manufacturing, packaging, and testing. In the past, corporations that needed chips purchased general-purpose products available on the market, but now there is a growing trend toward ASICs, in which they manufacture the chips they need themselves. By providing specialized solutions for this, we increased development demand and laid the foundation for generating revenue.
Above all, we were able to maintain stable sales growth because we ran projects with customers whose demand was certain. For example, when a company that makes headsets commissioned Semifive to develop chips for its own products, there was no worry the completed chips would not sell. This was possible because we broke away from the past business model where, even if we completed a chip with a fabless partner, no revenue was generated if customers did not show up."
— You said you would surpass 1 trillion won in revenue by 2029. What is the growth strategy?
"Semifive is building a portfolio across all areas from legacy (mature) nodes to advanced nodes. Semifive is the only Korean partner corporation of the U.S. GlobalFoundries. With GlobalFoundries, we are winning customers applying mature processes, such as automotive chips and smart glasses, and running projects. With Samsung Electronics' foundry business, we are collaborating mainly on 2-nanometer, 4-nanometer, and 8-nanometer, so it does not conflict with the business we do with GlobalFoundries.
Leveraging a diverse portfolio, we have built trust in the global market and revenue is growing rapidly. In the past, because Semifive was a startup, overseas customers would not entrust us with projects. But after successfully completing several projects, we laid the groundwork, and the overseas booking ratio jumped from just 5% in 2024 to 60% in 2025. Cumulative overseas bookings through the third quarter of 2025 stand at 55 billion won. The chip market is growing quickly in step with the AI industry, and Semifive is confident it has the capabilities to meet rising demand."
— Unlike past design houses, you are focusing on internalizing new technologies such as 3-dimensional (D) IC. Why?
"In the past, when a foundry developed a new process, the design house learned it and then sold it to fabless companies. Semifive's strategy is to internalize capabilities for technologies that will rise going forward in advance, so customers can more easily jump into development. As the AI industry advances, demand for advanced chips is increasing, but not only development expense, but also difficulty is soaring, raising the barrier to entry.
We see 3D IC as a technology that will become common across most advanced processes as chip miniaturization reaches its limits. Instead of improving performance by narrowing line widths of circuits as in the past, chips will be developed by stacking and connecting chips with different functions. Major changes are expected across design, process, packaging, and testing, which will make it hard for fabless companies to approach, but Semifive plans to secure the technology in advance and respond to customer demand accordingly."
— What is your strategy for using the funds raised through the listing?
"We plan to invest in expanding the capabilities of the design house. Funds will be used for M&A, talent acquisition, and research and development (R&D). To develop next-generation technologies such as 3D IC, we need to secure the necessary IP (intellectual property), and to ease the burden on customers, we must strengthen our design capabilities. To that end, we are strongly considering acquiring corporations with the capabilities."