South Korean AI startup FuriosaAI is taking connected the likes of Nvidia and AMD pinch its AI chips — and it doesn't request Meta's thief to compete.
According to a local news report from the South Korean news tract Maeil Business Newspaper earlier this week, Meta began full-scale negotiations to get FuriosaAI this year. Meta projected to bargain the startup for $800 million, complete $250 cardinal much than its existent marketplace worth of $545 million. The tech elephantine was willing successful furthering its ain AI chip-making endeavors by absorbing the startup's exertion and talent.
The study said that negotiations collapsed down because the 2 parties disagreed astir the guidance of FuriosaAI's business aft the imaginable acquisition. If Meta had acquired FuriosaAI, the startup's unit would person had to create customized AI chips solely for Meta's AI services alternatively of processing much broadly disposable AI chips to compete pinch Nvidia and different AI chipmakers.
FuriosaAI turned down Meta's connection to support processing its ain AI chips arsenic an independent business, per the report.
Related: Meta Is Building AI That Can Write Code Like a Mid-Level Engineer, According to Mark Zuckerberg
FuriosaAI announced its latest AI chip, RNDG (pronounced Renegade), successful August 2024. The startup claimed that the spot requires only 12.5% of the power of existing chips, pinch three times amended performance per watt than 1 of the most powerful chips connected the marketplace — Nvidia's H100 chips.
In an question and reply pinch Maeil Business News, FuriosaAI CEO Jun-ho Baek said that the institution was "confident successful the occurrence of RNDG" and plans to mass-produce the spot successful the 2nd half of the year.
"Furiosa AI is fresh to alteration the paradigm of the AI semiconductor marketplace pinch businesslike solutions," Baek told the outlet.
According to Bloomberg, FuriosaAI is successful the process of sending samples of its chips to astir a twelve imaginable customers, including LG AI Research.
Related: DeepSeek AI Cost Less Than $6 Million to Develop. Here's Why Meta and Microsoft Are Justifying Spending Billions.
Baek founded FuriosaAI successful April 2017 aft developing products for AMD successful Orlando, Florida, and Samsung Electronics successful South Korea. The startup now has astir 150 employees, including 15 who are based successful a Silicon Valley office, per Bloomberg. It developed its first AI chip, Warboy, in 2021.
Meta, meanwhile, has already announced its volition to walk heavy this twelvemonth connected AI to amended compete pinch rivals for illustration OpenAI and Google. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said successful January that Meta would walk up to $65 billion successful 2025 unsocial connected AI, including building information centers and adding much members to its AI workforce.
FuriosaAI isn't the first startup to cull an acquisition connection from a Big Tech company. Cybersecurity startup Wiz turned down Google's acquisition offer of $23 cardinal past summertime earlier accepting an connection of $32 billion earlier this month.
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