Soteria, a fabless corporations focused on ultra-low-power artificial intelligence (AI) chips, is accelerating preparations for an initial public offering (IPO) by shifting from founder-led management to a split model with separate leaders for technology and management. Building on technology credentials proven through mass-production experience, the company is restructuring and raising investment as it enters a growth trajectory.
According to the industry on the 27th, Soteria will shift to a co-CEO system with Yang Shin-ho and Bae Tae-jun starting in Apr. The founder, CEO Kim Jong-man, will serve as chair of the board and chief strategy officer (CSO), focusing on new businesses and mid- to long-term strategy. Founded in 2018, Soteria has received investments from Intervest, Korea Development Bank (KDB) Capital, IBK Capital, Hana Ventures and KB Securities. The current corporate value is estimated at about 220 billion won.
Soteria received the nation's first 4nm fab allocation from Samsung Electronics in 2022, and in 2024 completed a mass-production tape-out on Samsung Electronics' 4nm process. The company is said to have secured letters of commitment (LoCs) totaling $57 million (about 8 billion won) from multiple clients for its recent ultra-low-power Apollon chip. If mass-production testing of the Apollon chip succeeds, the purchases will be finalized and reflected in this year's revenue. As the Apollon chip has not yet begun mass production, there was no revenue last year.
CEO-designate Yang Shin-ho is a system-on-chip (SoC) ASIC design expert with 28 years of experience, having served as a project leader at Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, and will oversee Soteria's overall semiconductor development. Based on 4-nanometer mass-production experience, the company plans to extend its technology roadmap to next-generation 2-nanometer process development. CEO-designate Bae Tae-jun is a legal expert who worked at KIM&CHANG and Shin & Kim LLC, and will be responsible for overall management and investment and IPO strategy.
The transition is seen as more than a routine personnel reshuffle and is interpreted as groundwork for an IPO. Last month, the founder contributed about 55 billion won, roughly 25% of the shares held, to recruit outside talent and upgrade the organization, in the same vein. Soteria currently has around 30 employees, and, as is typical for chip design firms, is centered on developers. An industry official said, "A split-leadership structure separating technology and management is common among corporations preparing to list," adding, "It's an attempt to strengthen fundraising and governance transparency at the same time."
Soteria has secured differentiated technology in ultra-low-power AI Semiconductor chips. Beyond AI Semiconductor, it is expanding its business through the ARES acceleration solution, which improves large language model (LLM) inference performance. The solution separates LLM decode operations and large-scale KV cache handling from the graphics processing unit (GPU) to reduce compute load and memory bottlenecks, and is said to deliver about twice the performance of existing setups. The company has signed a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) with a large data center in Beijing, China, and is conducting benchmark tests.
Meanwhile, Soteria plans to begin MTO (mask tape-out, the effective end of the design phase and shift to manufacturing) for the Apollon chip this year. Through this, the company aims to secure growth engines by simultaneously pursuing mass production of ultra-low-power ASICs and entry into the LLM accelerator market. The industry is paying attention to Soteria as a rare fabless corporations that targets both "low-power AI semiconductors" and "LLM inference acceleration." As AI models grow larger, power efficiency and compute bottlenecks are surfacing together, and Soteria's technology is being evaluated as a potential new alternative.