South Korean AI chip startup Rebellions targets IPO next year

By Hyunjoo Jin

SEOUL, July 8 (Reuters) – South Korean AI chip startup Rebellions aims to list its shares on the Korean market in the first half of next year, followed ​by a potential listing in the United States, its ‌co-founder and chief executive Park Sunghyun told Reuters on Wednesday.

“Our priority right now is Korea market,” he said.

“Then you can go to U.S. market using the ADR just as how SK Hynix is planning,” he said, referring to American Depositary ‌Receipts (ADR), ​which allow U.S. investors to buy shares ⁠of foreign companies directly on ⁠U.S. stock exchanges.

South Korean chipmaker SK Hynix launched a U.S. share sale to raise 43 trillion won ($28 billion) as it capitalises on the global AI boom with one of the world’s largest ​new share sales.

Park said Rebellions will prepare all the paperwork by the end of this year and, depending on the market, ⁠it will go public in the ⁠first quarter or second quarter of next year.

“We see ​the market volatility,” he said.

Chip stocks have lost momentum in recent ​days after a stellar run, as concerns resurfaced about the ‌durability of the AI boom.

In March, Rebellions said it had raised $400 million in its latest funding round, valuing the company at about $2.34 billion, underscoring investor interest in companies developing cost-efficient alternatives to dominant AI ⁠chipmakers such as Nvidia.

Korea National Growth Fund provided 250 billion won ($165 million) in the latest round, the first direct investment by the government under ⁠its “K-Nvidia” initiative.

This project ‌aims to nurture a globally competitive chip company ⁠amid intensifying competition in a sector dominated by ​U.S. firms.

Founded ‌in 2020, Rebellions designs neural processing units for ​AI inference. ⁠It is headquartered in South Korea and operates in the United States.

Rebellions’ investors include Wa’ed Ventures, a venture capital arm of Saudi Aramco , Samsung, SK Hynix and SK Telecom.

The underwriter of the IPO would be JP Morgan.

(Reporting by Hyunjoo Jin. Editing by Christopher Cushing, Raju Gopalakrishnan ​and Mark Potter)