Fabless Korean startup wants to entice European inference chip-hungry enterprises

South Korean fabless chip startup FuriosaAI is expanding into Europe by deploying its RNGD AI inference accelerators in Equinix's Lisbon LS2 data center, aiming to attract European enterprises seeking non-American computing options. The company, which rejected an $800 million acquisition offer from Meta, is pursuing independent growth with backing from Broadcom and Korean investors.

South Korean chip startup FuriosaAI is expanding into Europe, having struck a deal with colo giant Equinix to deploy its AI inference accelerators in its Lisbon LS2 data center. Furiosa’s 180-watt, peripheral component interconnect express PCIe -based RNGD accelerators are fabricated on the five-nanometer process from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company TSMC . They form the compute basis of its inference-optimized server lines, which it claims provide higher inference capacity per rack. Furiosa said the deployment marks its “initial step” on the continent, with it also having set up an office in the Portuguese capital. The sites are set to act effectively as showrooms for prospective European enterprises looking for non-American computing options. “By pairing Equinix’s infrastructure footprint designed for efficiency and sustainability with our high-performance, energy-efficient RNGD architecture, we unlock the ability for enterprises to run inference sustainably and reliably,” said Furiosa co-founder and CEO June Paik. Founded in 2017, Furiosa has been on a rapid rise amidst the scramble for AI-centric hardware, culminating in a stunning rejection of an $800 million acquisition offer from Meta https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/meta-in-talks-to-acquire-ai-chip-startup-furiosaai-report/ . The fabless firm is now going it alone in a bid to grow as an independent company. That said, the Seoul-based firm partnered with Broadcom https://www.sdxcentral.com/news/furiosaai-partners-with-broadcom-for-development-of-ai-inference-chips/ in May to work on the development of its third-generation AI accelerator, with a view to evolving its Tensor Contraction Processor TCP to a 2nm compute die. In addition to Broadcom’s support, Furiosa counts backers including the Korea Development Bank, Industrial Bank of Korea, and Kakao Investment. It raised $250 million in a Series C funding round last May https://furiosa.ai/blog/announcing-furiosaais-125m-series-c-bridge-funding-to-scale-sustainable-ai-compute , and it's reportedly among the growing number of fabless chip firms mulling going public https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/?tag=furiosaai .