SEOUL, South Korea – South Korean start-up, Rebellions Inc, has launched its latest product, the ATOM chip, an artificial intelligence (AI) chip that is aimed at challenging global leader Nvidia Corp in the competitive AI hardware market. AI has become the center of attention in the tech industry as the chatbot, ChatGPT, from OpenAI, has become the fastest-growing consumer app just two months after its launch, according to UBS. Nvidia, a US-based chip designer, currently holds a large share of the high-end AI chip market, accounting for 86% of the computing power of the world’s six largest cloud services as of December, according to Jefferies chip analyst Mark Lipacis.
The South Korean government is investing over $800 million over the next five years in research and development to foster a domestic AI chip industry, with the aim of increasing the market share of Korean AI chips in domestic data centers from 0% to 80% by 2030.
Rebellions’ ATOM chip is designed to excel in running computer vision and chatbot AI applications and consumes only 20% of the power of an Nvidia A100 chip, which is the most popular chip for AI workloads, on those specific tasks. ATOM, which is manufactured by Samsung Electronics Co, is not capable of training AI models like the A100.
The South Korean government is taking a unique approach by singling out AI chips for support and will be putting out a notice this month for two neural processing unit farms, with only domestic chipmakers allowed to bid. The authorities aim to create a market that can be a test bed for AI chipmakers, fostering global competitors.
Rebellions will participate in the government project in a consortium with KT Corp, a large Korean telecom, cloud, and data center operator, with the goal of attracting Nvidia customers to their technology. With the cooperation between KT and Rebellions, they aim to have an ‘AI full stack’ that encompasses both software and hardware based on domestic technology.
“There’s a lot of momentum behind Nvidia’s developments. These startups have got to build momentum, so that will take time,” says Alan Priestley, an analyst at IT research firm Gartner. “But government incentives such as what’s happening in Korea could well affect the market share within Korea.”
In conclusion, Rebellions’ launch of the ATOM chip marks an exciting development in the competitive AI hardware market, and with the support of the South Korean government, it has the potential to become a significant player in the industry. With a consortium with KT Corp and funding from Temasek Pavilion Capital and the South Korean government, the future looks promising for Rebellions and its innovative AI technology.
