South Korean chip start-up FuriosaAI has turned down a US$800 million takeover offer from Meta Platforms Inc, choosing instead to grow the business as an independent company, a person with knowledge of the matter said.
Meta had been in discussions about acquiring Seoul-based FuriosaAI since the start of this year, the person said.
FuriosaAI is one of only a handful of Asian start-ups that have attracted Meta Platforms. Led by June Paik, who previously worked at Samsung Electronics Co and Advanced Micro Devices Inc, FuriosaAI develops semiconductors for artificial intelligence (AI) inferencing, or services.
Photo: Reuters
The eight-year-old company’s second-generation processor, RNGD (pronounced “renegade”), is designed to challenge products from industry leader Nvidia Corp as well as fellow start-ups Groq Inc, SambaNova Systems Inc and Cerebras Systems Inc.
Meta Platforms is investing heavily in AI infrastructure, seeking to better compete in a fast-moving race against the likes of OpenAI and Google as well as upstarts such as Hangzhou-based DeepSeek (深度求索).
The Menlo Park, California-based company is also working on its own chips designed for its own AI workloads, including powering the ranking and recommendations ads on Facebook and Instagram. In 2023, it introduced its first custom AI inference chips — and it unveiled an upgraded version last year.
FuriosaAI plans to raise capital before eventually pursuing an initial public offering, according to people familiar with the matter. The start-up, which has about 150 employees, including 15 in its Silicon Valley office, is currently providing samples of its chips to customers including LG AI Research, the AI arm of the LG Group, and Saudi Arabian Oil Co, the people said.
They are part of a broader pipeline of about a dozen customers engaged in sampling during the first half of this year, they said.
The company’s latest chip, RNGD, is built on Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (台積電) 5-nanometer process technology and uses HBM3 memory chips supplied by SK Hynix Inc.
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