This brings the total capital raised for SEMIFIVE to $147 million since its inception in 2019 with investments from BonAngels, Game Changer, Korea Investment Partners, LB Investment, Mirae Asset Venture Investment and Pavilion Capital (a subsidiary of Temasek).
According to the company, proceeds from this round will be used to accelerate design platform deployment, new technologies and methodologies, scale R&D and engineering teams and build up new capabilities in the areas of IP solutions.
Within three years of its founding, SEMIFIVE is now the fastest growing Samsung Foundry SAFETM DSP with more than 300 employees worldwide representing development and sales organisations in the United States, India, Vietnam and Korea.
SEMIFIVE’s continued investment can be attributed to its business model that will help to transform the rapidly changing semiconductor industry. Large companies such as Apple and Tesla have been driving innovation through custom semiconductors, but the challenge of long development cycles and prohibitive costs present key barriers for many companies. This is in stark contrast to the software industry, where anyone can easily develop apps, enabling more innovations.
“SEMIFIVE’s key focus is to enable innovation by making custom silicon accessible and affordable. We envision ourselves as the new global hub of custom silicon,” said Brandon Cho, CEO and founder of SEMIFIVE. “With the strong support from our investors, we are accelerating our strategy in the U.S. which is a pivotal base for business expansion and added capabilities. Anticipating strong growth, we are scaling our sales, customer and technical support organisations.”
SEMIFIVE’s platform SoC approach significantly reduces chip development cost and schedule, enabling more diverse industry players to innovate and challenge the semiconductor landscape. To date, several AI-based semiconductor start-ups such as FuriosaAI, Rebellions and Mobilint have signed on as customers. The custom silicon chips are designed using Samsung Foundry’s advanced FinFET process nodes.
In addition to AI, SEMIFIVE offers design platforms for edge compute, AIoT, and data acceleration. The company will also add high performance compute and automotive platforms to its portfolio.
