South Korean startup FuriosaAI, which produces chips for artificial intelligence, has rejected an $800 million takeover offer from Meta. The company has decided to focus on the development and production of its own AI chips.
South Korean startup FuriosaAI, which produces chips for artificial intelligence, has rejected an $800 million takeover offer from Meta. The company has decided to focus on the development and production of its own AI chips.
The reason for the breakdown of negotiations was disagreements over business strategy and organizational structure after the acquisition, not pricing issues, writes TechCrunch.
Along with other tech companies building large language models for various AI applications, Meta is trying to reduce its reliance on Nvidia for chips that specialize in training and creating LLMs. Last year, the company introduced its own AI chips and in January said it would invest up to $65 billion this year to support its AI initiatives.
FuriosaAI was founded in 2017 by Jun Paik, a former Samsung Electronics and AMD engineer who earned a master’s degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology. It is a semiconductor company specializing in artificial intelligence chips; its flagship product, the RNGD processor, is designed for data center servers.
FuriosaAI unveiled RNGD in Silicon Valley in August 2024. The startup said the chip delivers three times the performance per watt of Nvidia’s high-end H100 AI processor. The company positions RNGD as «the ideal choice for deploying large-scale generative AI models», including Meta’s Llama 2 and Llama 3. Mass production of RNGD is expected to begin this year at Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC).
FuriosaAI is reportedly currently in talks with investors to raise approximately $48 million and intends to complete the fundraising this month.
As we will recall, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg previously announced his intention to build a data center in Louisiana, the size of Manhattan Island. According to him, 2025 will be a «definitive year for AI,» and therefore Meta will allocate an additional $60–65 billion for its development.
