Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is in discussions to acquire South Korean artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor startup FuriosaAI, Forbes reported on Feb. 11. The deal could be finalized as early as this month, as Meta ramps up efforts to develop custom AI chips amid growing demand for alternatives to Nvidia’s AI processors.
Founded in 2017 by June Paik, a former Samsung Electronics and AMD engineer with a master’s degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, FuriosaAI is a fabless semiconductor company specializing in AI inference chips. Its flagship product, the RNGD processor, is designed for data center servers.
In August 2024, FuriosaAI unveiled RNGD in Silicon Valley, claiming the chip delivers three times the performance per watt compared to Nvidia’s high-end AI processor, the H100. The company has positioned RNGD as an ideal choice for deploying large-scale generative AI models, including Meta’s Llama 2 and Llama 3. Mass production of RNGD is set to begin this year at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).
Meta has announced plans to invest up to $65 billion this year in AI development and new data centers, with the FuriosaAI acquisition expected to be part of that strategy. To date, FuriosaAI has raised approximately $115 million in funding and recently secured a 2 billion won ($1.5 million) investment from venture capital firm CRIT Ventures on Feb. 4. However, details on the company’s valuation and the potential acquisition price have not been disclosed.
Meta’s move comes as major tech companies increasingly focus on in-house AI chip development. OpenAI is working on its own AI chip design, aiming for mass production as early as next year. Amazon has developed its own AI processors, Trainium and Inferentia, to diversify its AI chip supply, while Microsoft recently introduced its custom central processing unit (CPU), the Cobalt 100.
