Korean NPU makers seek track records ahead of potential IPOs

Rebellions' ATOM-Max Server / Courtesy of Rebellions

Rebellions, FuriosaAI and DEEPX, three domestic Korean makers of neural processing units (NPUs), are striving to build track records in the market, as securing actual customers and generating revenue are essential to raising their valuations and pursuing initial public offerings (IPOs).

Rebellions, which designs its ATOM NPU for small data centers and on-device artificial intelligence (AI), said Monday that it will supply ATOM-Max Servers to public surveillance control centers operated by the South Gyeongsang Provincial Government and Ulsan Metropolitan City.

Marking the first case of an AI-based public CCTV surveillance system in Korea, Rebellions’ ATOM-Max will run a large vision-language model with 30 billion parameters on servers at the control centers to analyze surveillance footage. The system will identify fires and suspicious activity and generate Korean-language descriptions of the situations.

Earlier, the company ran SK Telecom’s hyperscale AI model A.X K1 on a single one of its own servers, while KT Cloud has been offering cloud services powered by ATOM. Rebellions is also participating in data center development projects as a strategic partner of SK hynix and SK Telecom.

Rebellions raised 640 billion won ($448 million) in a pre-IPO funding round in March, with investors valuing the company at 3.4 trillion won.

Given that Rebellions already generated 32 billion won in revenue last year, the company was expected to pursue an IPO as early as this year. However, CEO Park Sung-hyun said in an interview with CNBC last month that the company is seeking to go public on the Korean stock market in the first half of next year. Its goal is to build a stronger track record and secure a higher valuation during its actual IPO.

A promotion image for a data center project between FuriosaAI, I/ONX HPC and Velox / Courtesy of FuriosaAI

FuriosaAI, which made headlines last year by rejecting an $800 million acquisition offer from Meta, is also building up its track record in pursuit of a higher valuation.

The company said Wednesday that it will join a next-generation AI data center project in Sweden in partnership with U.S. AI infrastructure company I/ONX HPC and data center developer and operator Velox.

During the first phase of the project, FuriosaAI will supply 1,800 RNGD AI inference accelerators. In subsequent expansion phases, the company plans to deliver more than 8,800 in total.

Last month, Samsung SDS launched an NPU-as-a-Service powered by FuriosaAI’s RNGD. FuriosaAI also agreed to work with global digital infrastructure company Equinix to deploy servers equipped with RNGD chips at an Equinix data center in Lisbon, Portugal.

FuriosaAI is now valued at around 3 trillion won, and the company is seeking to pursue a pre-IPO to raise about 800 billion won from investors including the government-led National Growth Fund. The company is expected to pursue its IPO in late 2028.

At right is DEEPX's DX-H1 V-NPU, which the company will supply to the Republic of Korea Air Force. Courtesy of DEEPX

DEEPX, a fabless NPU maker specializing in low-power on-device AI and edge computing, is also building its track record by expanding its supplies to various projects.

The company said Wednesday that its chips will be used to build AI-powered perimeter surveillance systems at Air Force bases in Korea. The project marks the first use of an AI video surveillance system powered entirely by domestically developed NPUs in Korea’s defense sector.

The system will use DEEPX’s DX-H1 V-NPU and DX-H1 Edge Server NPU cards to analyze footage from multiple surveillance cameras in real time without GPUs. DEEPX is also participating in projects to convert public surveillance systems in Ulsan and South Gyeongsang Province to AI-based systems.

The company is currently conducting a Series D funding round worth between 300 billion won and 350 billion won.