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.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle