AI startup Rebellions raises $124m to go after Nvidia

Rebellions closed Series B funding with 165 billion won. [REBELLIONS]

Korean AI startup Rebellions attracted 165 billion won ($124 million) in its Series B funding as it looks to make inroads in the Nvidia-dominated AI chip market.

This resulted in the valuation of the Korean startup reaching 880 billion won.

The AI chip designer said Tuesday that it has closed Series B financing, led by telecom giant KT which contributed 33 billion won.

Rebellions plans to use the fund to recruit human resources and develop its next-generation AI chip named Rebel, a neural processing unit (NPU) that targets large language models. Co-developed with Samsung Electronics, Rebel which will be manufactured on Samsung's 4-nanometer nodes, aims to complete development by the end of this year and start mass production next year.

The AI chip startup also said the fund will be spent on ramping up mass production of Atom, its NPU product for data centers, set for release this year.

"Due to investors, who decided to make a 165 billion won investment in Rebellions despite unfavorable market conditions, Rebellions was able to prove its competitiveness as a representative AI chip startup of Korea," Shin Sung-kyue, the chief financial officer of Rebellions said in a release.

"The latest large-scale investment will be a stepping stone for Rebellions to expand to the global stage including the United States and Japan while accelerating development of next-generation products that are being planned with partners in and outside of Korea."

Rebellions has attracted a total of 280 billion won since its foundation three and a half years ago. Its latest funding includes new investors like France's Korelya Capital and Japan's DG Daiwa Ventures which the startup is banking on to advance onto the global stage.

It also became the first domestic startup to attract a second-round of funding from Pavilion Capital, the company said.

KT, which is investing in Rebllions for the second time, had financed a total of 66.5 billion won into the startup, as it looks to strengthen its AI alliance.

"In partnership with Rebellions, [KT] will be able to provide hyperscale AI service with price competitiveness," the telecom company said. "KT will continue to forge partnerships with various tech companies including Rebellions so that Korean AI chips can compete on the global stage."

Rebellions is considered one of the leading AI chip-designing startups in Korea along with FuriosaAI and Sapeon. Its soon-to-launch Atom NPU had received higher scores for large-language and vision models compared to Nvidia and Qualcomm, according to industry-standard MLPerf Inference v3.0 benchmark tests released last year.

BY JIN EUN-SOO [jin.eunsoo@joongang.co.kr]