South Korean AI chipmakers Sapeon and Rebellions ink deal to merge

South Korean AI chipmakers Rebellions and Sapeon Korea said on Sunday that they have signed a definitive merger agreement.

Sapeon Korea — which has been established by SK Telecom (NYSE:SKM) — and AI chip startup Rebellions had announced the plans to merge in June, aiming to boost global AI infrastructure competitiveness.

Post-merger, Sapeon will be the surviving entity, with Rebellions’ current leadership managing the merged entity. The new company will keep the name Rebellions and will be headed by Rebellions’ CEO Park Sung-hyun.

To secure Rebellions’ new management as the merged entity’s majority shareholders, Sapeon’s current shareholders — SK Telecom, SK Square and SK Hynix — will sell 3% of their Sapeon’s shares before the merger, said SK Telecom in a press release on Sunday.

SK Hynix supplies high bandwidth memory, or HBM, chips to Nvidia (NVDA). The market for HBM is led by the two South Korean companies, SK hynix and Samsung (OTCPK:SSNLF), and to a lesser extent, by American chipmaker Micron Technology (MU).

SK Telecom noted that, after the merger, it will be a strategic investor, actively supporting the newly formed company’s expansion in the global AI semiconductor market and boosting South Korea’s leadership in AI chip technology.

SK Telecom added that with two companies’ development capabilities and expertise in the neural processing unit market, the new company will be well positioned to compete in the global AI semiconductor industry.

Rebellions, which was founded in 2020, has successfully launched two AI chips within three years and has raised over $225M in funding from investors worldwide. The company started mass production of its AI chip ATOM this year and plans to launch its next-generation AI chip ‘REBEL’ by the end of this year.

Sapeon was spun off from SK Telecom’s internal R&D organization in 2016.