Meta Platforms, the parent company of Facebook, is reportedly in discussions to acquire South Korean artificial intelligence semiconductor design startup FuriosaAI, according to Forbes and industry sources on Wednesday.
Citing sources familiar with the matter, Forbes reported that the acquisition talks could be finalized as early as this month.
FuriosaAI is a fabless semiconductor company specializing in AI inference chips for data center servers. The startup was founded in 2017 by Paik June, a former engineer at Samsung Electronics and US chip giant AMD.
The company introduced its first AI chip, Warboy, in 2021, followed by the launch of its next-generation AI chip, RNGD, in August last year.
When unveiling RNGD in Silicon Valley in August, FuriosaAI boasted that it offers three times the performance per watt compared to Nvidia’s advanced AI chip, the H100.
“RNGD will be an ideal choice for the large-scale deployment of advanced generative AI models such as Meta's Llama 2 and Llama 3,” the company explained.
It plans to mass-produce the next-generation AI chip at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing this year.
The Korean AI chip startup has reportedly attracted interest from multiple companies, with Meta being one of them, according to the sources.
Meta’s interest in FuriosaAI is seen as part of its broader effort to develop in-house AI chips. With US chip giant Nvidia dominating about 80 percent of the AI semiconductor market, major tech firms such as Meta, Microsoft and Google are actively seeking to build their own AI chip ecosystems.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has announced plans to invest up to $65 billion in AI infrastructure this year. The company aims to construct new large-scale data centers and allocate between $60 billion and $65 billion to AI-related technologies.
A Meta Korea official, however, declined to comment on the acquisition rumor.
FuriosaAI has raised around $115 million in funding so far. Earlier this month, it secured a 2 billion won ($1.4 million) investment from domestic venture capital firm Crit Ventures.
Korean IT giant Naver and local investment firm DSC Investment participated in the company's early funding rounds. Paik reportedly holds an 18.4 percent stake in the company.
By Jo He-rim (herim@heraldcorp.com)
