By By Asia Today and translated by UPI
Publication Date: 2025-12-17 05:58:00
Ai Chip startup Rebellion aim to challenge Nvidia as unicorn. Computer chips circuits boards. File Photo by Jon Sullivan/Wikimedia Commons
Dec. 16 (Asia Today) — Rebellion Chief Executive Park Sung-hyun said Tuesday the South Korean AI semiconductor startup wants to “compete head-to-head” with Nvidia as the company marked its fifth anniversary and said its valuation has reached about 2 trillion won (about $1.5 billion), meeting the threshold commonly used for “unicorn” status.
“Even if it kills me, I want to step into the same ring as NVIDIA and face them head-on,” Park said at a media day at Rebellion’s headquarters in Seongnam, south of Seoul.
Founded in 2020, Rebellion has positioned itself as an AI chipmaker focused on inference – the computing used to run AI services – rather than large-scale model training. The company said it has built “real-world” usage references by deploying its chips in services with live traffic in telecommunications, the public sector and enterprise markets.
Executives said competition in AI semiconductors is shifting as AI services spread and inference becomes a key battleground, where power efficiency and operating costs can matter as much as raw performance. The company pointed to moves such as Google‘s expansion of its Tensor Processing Unit into large-scale cloud offerings as evidence that specialized AI chips developed for internal use can be adapted for commercial services.
Rebellion said it is seeking to differentiate itself in a…
