AI Semiconductor startup Rebellions is joining hands with KB Financial Group to build AI infrastructure in the financial sector. This is the first time a Korea-made Neural Processing Unit (NPU) corporations has established an AI infrastructure cooperation framework with a major domestic financial holding company.
Rebellions said on the 27th that it signed a strategic memorandum of understanding (MOU) with KB Financial Group for "comprehensive AI and finance cooperation." The signing ceremony was attended by Rebellions CEO Park Sung-hyun and KB Financial Group Chairman Yang Jong-hee, along with key officials from both companies. The two sides agreed to build a cooperative framework aimed at strengthening the competitiveness of domestic financial AI infrastructure in response to the era of sovereign AI.
Under the agreement, Rebellions plans to provide KB Financial Group with technology and products needed to build inference infrastructure based on Korea-made AI Semiconductor and financial AI services. KB Financial Group will support Rebellions in various areas, including business operations, financing, and financial services. The two sides also agreed to pursue cooperation over the mid to long term to expand the national AI ecosystem.
Recently in the financial sector, as moves to introduce "agentic AI," which makes its own judgments and performs tasks beyond Generative AI, have gained momentum, demand for large-scale AI inference infrastructure has been growing rapidly. In particular, because of network separation regulations, the financial sector faces constraints in using external clouds, increasing the need to build on-premise AI infrastructure that can run AI on internal networks.
Rebellions plans to accelerate its push into the financial AI inference market, leveraging its next-generation NPU products and experience building large-scale commercial services. The company said that through this collaboration with KB Financial Group, it will secure application cases in financial field operations and work to establish standards for domestic financial AI infrastructure.
This collaboration is also assessed as meaningful in that it is a case where the financial sector and a deep-tech startup are building the domestic AI ecosystem together, beyond a simple investment relationship. KB Investment and KB Securities have been key investors participating since Rebellions' early investment stages. Rebellions was recently valued at about 3.4 trillion won and was selected as the first corporations for a direct investment by the Public Growth Fund.
Rebellions CEO Park Sung-hyun said, "KB Financial Group has been a partner that believed in the potential and worked with Rebellions even before it proved its technological prowess," adding, "This agreement will be the starting point of a virtuous cycle in which technology nurtured by finance leads back to innovation in financial infrastructure."