Rebellions Inc. and Sapeon Korea Inc. want to secure a major lead in the AI semiconductor market, as AI is seeing a global surge with a proposed merger.
The merger, according to Rebellions and SK Telecom in a joint statement, is scheduled for the third quarter of 2024 and will place the newly formed company against the market leader in AI chips.
The merger followed closely four months after Rebellions raised a $124 million Series B, which was estimated to be worth $658 million.
Sapeon, which was founded in 2016 and separated from SK Telecom in 2022, develops full-stack software and NPU hardware.
Both firms agreed that Korea has a great chance to lead the competitive AI chip market in the next two to three years, and they decided to quickly build a fresh entity together.
According to the statement, Rebellions will be in charge of the new organization’s administration because of its startup structure, which allows it to react more quickly in the semiconductor business. As of last year, the telecom behemoth owned 62.5 percent of Sapeon, a subsidiary of SK Telecom.
With the departure of Sapeon CEO Ryu Soo-jung imminent, Rebellions CEO Park Sung-hyun is expected to lead the new organisation.
Newsng understands that the two major telecom corporations in South Korea, SK Telecom and KT, as well as SK Hynix, the world’s second-largest memory chip manufacturer, will remain shareholders in the combined company. Rebellion is controlled by KT, while SK Telecom and SK Hynix support Sapeon.
“Rebellions and SKT see the next two to three years as a critical, golden time for South Korea to secure a strong foothold in the global AI semiconductor market. We’ll expedite the process needed to launch a merged entity at the earliest possible date,” Rebellions said in the statement.
We earlier reported that Yoon Suk Yeol, the president of South Korea, has launched a KRW26 trillion ($19.1 billion) support package that includes financial, infrastructure, R&D, and support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
