Two South Korean AI Chip Developers, Rellions And Sapeon Soon Merger

Illustration of the AI chip. (photo: x @PKSHACAPITAL)

JAKARTA - South Korean AI chip developers Rellions Inc and Sapeon Korea Inc. plan to join (merger). This was revealed by the parent company of Sapeon, SK Telecom Co, on Wednesday, June 12. This move is South Korea's latest attempt to challenge global AI chip leader, Nvidia, amid a continuing boom in artificial intelligence.

"This consolidation aims to win the global AI semiconductor market in the next two to three years, a period South Korea should not miss as AI competition around the world increases," SK Telecom said in a statement.

The merged company will seek to gain a strong position in the neural processing unit (NPU) used in AI, in which Rellions are responsible for joint entity management.

Rellions' ATOM chip, launched last year, was the first NPU to be developed in South Korea for use at the data center for a large language model (LLM) and entered mass production this year. Sapeon launched its next-generation AI chip, X330, in November last year.

"Following AI's penetration speed to various applications, the merger is expected to be signed during the third quarter of this year, and the joint company is launched at the end of the year," said SK Telecom.

Sapeon's AI X330 chip advantages include the following aspects:

High Performance:

Energy Efficiency:

Scalability:

Advanced Technology:

Easy Integration:

With these advantages, Sapeon's X330 chip has the potential to compete with products from major players in the global market, including Nvidia.