Rebellions CEO Park Sung-hyun expressed his ambition to “emerge as a rival to Nvidia in the global artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor market” at a press conference commemorating the company’s fifth anniversary, held at Rebellions’ headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province, on the 16th. Leveraging the power efficiency of the company’s domestically developed high-performance, high-efficiency neural processing unit (NPU), Rebellions aims to overtake Nvidia’s graphics processing units (GPUs) and expand its presence in the AI semiconductor market.

Rebellions is Korea’s first AI semiconductor unicorn (a startup with a corporate value of KRW 1 trillion or more). It has secured accumulated investment of KRW 650 billion from Samsung, SK, KT, Aramco, ARM and others.

Park said, “AI semiconductors are an industry that requires long-term investment rather than expecting short-term results,” adding, “Google’s tensor processing unit (TPU), which has recently received favorable reviews, took 10 years just to develop and is now in its seventh generation.” He went on to say, “Rebellions’ products can also grow into the second and third TPUs,” expressing confidence.

Rebellions has developed its next-generation NPU ‘RebelQuad’, which incorporates fifth-generation high bandwidth memory (HBM), HBM3E. This product is currently undergoing performance testing with major AI companies in the United States. According to the company, RebelQuad delivers flagship-level performance comparable to Nvidia’s GPUs, while its power efficiency (performance per watt) is 2.4 times higher than Nvidia’s high-performance AI chip ‘H200’, and its power consumption is about half.

Park also voiced regret that a substantial portion of the government’s infrastructure investment has been concentrated on securing GPUs. “If the government and major corporations would invest even one-tenth of the budget they are spending to purchase 260,000 Nvidia GPUs into Korea’s AI semiconductor industry, it would open a path forward,” he said. The 260,000 Nvidia GPUs that the Korean government and private companies have agreed to purchase are estimated to be worth about KRW 14 trillion.

Park founded Rebellions after working at Intel and SpaceX before returning to Korea. “I judged that the robust semiconductor infrastructure built by Samsung Electronics and SK hynix, combined with the design capabilities of Korean engineers, provided the foundation to create a global AI semiconductor company,” he said. On the company’s listing plans, Park stated, “We plan to list first on the domestic stock market and ultimately aim for a Nasdaq listing as well.“

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