DeepX, a homegrown fabless (semiconductor design) corporations, said on the 15th it signed a strategic technology and market-entry partnership with Ultralytics, the developer of the object-recognition artificial intelligence (AI) model YOLO.
Ultralytics is a corporations that provides an AI model framework widely used by Computer Vision developers. YOLO is considered a leading object-recognition model used in industrial cameras, robots, Autonomous Driving, and Smart City applications. The Ultralytics platform is known to be downloaded more than 300,000 times a day.
The core of this collaboration is that DeepX's Neural Processing Unit (NPU) will be integrated into the Ultralytics platform as a default supported option. Developers can reduce separate complex conversion steps by specifying the output format for DeepX when converting and deploying models to run on DeepX chips.
Ultralytics' existing hardware partners include global edge semiconductor corporations such as Intel and STMicroelectronics. Through this collaboration, DeepX will compete within the same developer ecosystem as these companies. Observers say it is unusual for a domestic AI Semiconductor corporations to become a default option in toolchains used by global developers.
DeepX plans to provide a hardware environment optimized for the latest YOLO-family models and the next-generation model YOLO26. Its flagship product, the DX-M1, is in mass production, and the next-generation product DX-M2, built on a 2-nanometer process, is also being designed to support these models.
DeepX said its NPU can reduce power consumption compared with a graphics processing unit (GPU) while maintaining object-recognition performance, making it suitable for physical AI fields such as robots, industrial automation, and Smart City. Streamlining the process that links AI models and hardware could also reduce development time and expense.
Kim Nok-won, CEO of DeepX, said, "This collaboration is a turning point that makes K-AI semiconductors the default choice for developers worldwide," adding, "We will spread DeepX's intelligent semiconductors to everyday devices such as robots, Smart City, and home appliances."