South Korea's AI chip startup Rebellions raises $400 million in latest funding round

SEOUL, March 30 (Reuters) - South Korea's Rebellions said on Monday it had raised $400 million in its latest funding round, valuing the artificial intelligence chip startup at about $2.34 billion as it accelerates expansion into the U.S.

Rebellions said the round, led by Mirae Asset Financial Group and the Korea National Growth Fund, follows a $250 million Series C in September and brings its total capital raised to $850 million.

Rebellions said it was entering a new phase of growth, focused on expanding in the U.S., scaling up its Rebel100 platform and preparing for an IPO.

Founded in 2020, Rebellions designs neural processing units for AI inference. It said demand for efficient AI infrastructure was rising rapidly across cloud providers, telecom operators and government-backed initiatives, particularly in the U.S.

It plans to use the proceeds to speed up its chip design plans, add new chips to its product roadmap and expand its team.

The company's goal is to export "domestic success in Korea to global markets, to build out AI sovereignty and large-scale inference," Rebellions Chief Business Officer Marshall Choy told Reuters in an interview on Monday.

Choy declined to discuss the IPO timing.

Rebellions' focus for its chips revolves around achieving the best performance for the least amount of energy, Choy said.

It chose to focus there because the major AI battleground has moved from the large models that power chatbots such as OpenAI's ChatGPT to the infrastructure supporting it, he said.

Korea National Growth Fund provided 250 billion won ($165.45 million) in the latest round, the first direct investment by the government under its "K-Nvidia" initiative.

This project aims to nurture a globally competitive chip company amid intensifying competition in a sector dominated by U.S. firms such as Nvidia NVDA.O.

The Rebellions funding round underscores growing investor interest in companies developing alternatives to dominant AI chipmakers, as demand for cost-efficient and deployable AI systems increases globally.

Rebellions' investors include Aramco's 2223.SE Wa'ed Ventures, Arm, KT 030200.KS, Samsung, SK Hynix 000660.KS and SK Telecom 017670.KS. It is headquartered in South Korea and operates in the United States.

Mirae Asset's investments also include SpaceX.

($1 = 1,511.0000 won)