According to South Korean media reports, FuriosaAI, a startup specializing in AI application chips, recently rejected an $800 million acquisition offer from tech giant Meta. FuriosaAI stated that it will continue to focus on independent research and development and production of its AI chips.
Reports indicate that the breakdown of the acquisition talks stemmed primarily from disagreements on business strategy and organizational structure post-acquisition, rather than the acquisition price itself.
Similar to many tech companies focused on building large language models (LLMs), Meta has been actively seeking to reduce its reliance on AI chip giant Nvidia. Nvidia's chips dominate the training and building of LLMs. To this end, Meta launched its custom AI chips last year and announced in January that it would invest up to $650 billion by 2025 to support its AI development plan.
As of now, both FuriosaAI and Meta have not responded to requests for comment.
It's noteworthy that, concurrently, FuriosaAI is in talks with investors to secure approximately $48 million (70 billion KRW) in funding, expected to be completed this month.
FuriosaAI was founded in 2017 by June Paik, who previously worked at Samsung Electronics and AMD. The company has successfully developed two AI chips, Warboy and Renegade (RNGD), aiming to compete with industry leaders like Nvidia and AMD.
FuriosaAI revealed that its RNGD chip has completed testing in collaboration with LG AI Research and Aramco (Saudi Aramco). The chip is reportedly particularly suitable for inference models. LG AI Research plans to adopt the RNGD chip in its AI infrastructure, and FuriosaAI plans to officially launch these chips later this year.
