Capturing even a sliver of the worldwide market would be a game-changer. As companies race to adopt generative AI tools trained on vast amounts of data, demand for AI chips has exploded in the past two years
Rebellions co-founder and CEO Sunghyun Park found domestic success with his energy-efficient Atom series (pictured here)
Image: Jae-Hyun Kim for Forbes Asia
A year ago, Sunghyun Park, co-founder and CEO of Seongnam-based AI chip design firm Rebellions, got a call he was least expecting. Ryu Young-sang, head of SK Telecom, South Korea’s largest mobile operator by market share and a subsidiary of the powerful chaebol SK group, wanted to meet, recalls the 40-year-old Park, to discuss joining forces in South Korea’s vaunted semiconductor industry. But even before Ryu “talked to me about a merger, I thought merging was the only way to survive”, Park says candidly.
Rebellions had made a name for itself with its energy-efficient AI computer chips with a range of applications, from high-frequency trading to supporting large language model tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT. After launching the company in 2020, Park raised $225 million over five funding rounds to bankroll its Atom chip series that had become the chips of choice for South Korea’s data centres. And Rebellions’ next generation of low-power-consuming chips, designed for electricity-guzzling AI hyperscalers, was on its way. But Park was well aware that he couldn’t wing it on his own to realise his global ambitions.
Meanwhile SK Telecom—a crown jewel in the business empire controlled by Chey Tae-won (No 36 among Korea’s 50 Richest)—had its own AI chip startup Sapeon Korea, which was slugging it out with Rebellions in the domestic market with its X330 chip. Ryu and Park concluded that by joining forces they would not only create a national chip champion, but one with enough heft and scale to take on deep-pocketed global rivals overseas, including the industry’s undisputed leader, American tech giant Nvidia.
Â
“Only a few AI chip players can survive. In this fast-changing market, we need to consolidate all of Korea’s top talent within a single company,” says Park. “I don’t want to waste time and energy to compete inside Korea,” he adds.
(This story appears in the 27 June, 2025 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)