South Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT and the Financial Services Commission said on March 26 they held a meeting of the National Growth Fund's fund management deliberation committee and approved an agenda item to directly invest 250 billion won from the Advanced Strategic Industries Fund into AI semiconductor (NPU) fabless company Rebellion.

The investment is part of the 'K-Nvidia fostering' project. It is the fourth first-phase mega-project agenda item approved following the Sinan Ui offshore wind power project in January, and in February the Ulsan next-generation secondary battery materials plant construction project by ISU Specialty Chemical and Samsung Electronics' Pyeongtaek Line 5 AI semiconductor cluster project. It is the first case to use direct equity investment.

The total capital increase for Rebellion is 600 billion won. In addition to 250 billion won from the Advanced Strategic Industries Fund, Korea Development Bank will participate with 50 billion won and private investors including Mirae Asset with 300 billion won. The company's pre-investment valuation was assessed at about 2.7 trillion won. The fund management deliberation committee decided to provide the funds through the purchase of redeemable convertible preferred shares (RCPS).

Rebellion is an AI semiconductor design-focused venture company founded in 2020 and led by CEO Park Sung-hyun (박성현). SK, Samsung, KT, Britain's Arm and U.S. company Marvell are among its key strategic investors. In August last year it developed its second-generation hyperscaler AI semiconductor, the 'Rebel(Rebel)100TM'. It is targeting expanded mass production by July this year. Rebel100TM features next-generation memory (HBM3E) to ease data bottlenecks and applies advanced chiplet packaging technology.

The Financial Services Commission said it expects the direct investment to contribute beyond simple hardware support by easing funding gaps in South Korea's AI semiconductor industry and securing sovereign AI capabilities. It said it is also meaningful because the structure involves domestic fabless companies designing and producing through domestic foundries, meaning the entire process from design to manufacturing is carried out in South Korea.

The National Growth Fund plans to approve additional companies for the K-Nvidia project. Five South Korean AI semiconductor companies including Rebellion, FuriosaAI, DeepX, Mobilint and Hyperaccel discussed investment strategy at a public-private joint meeting on March 17 attended by Vice Prime Minister and Science and ICT Minister Bae Kyung-hoon (배경훈) and Financial Services Commission Chairman Lee Eok-won (이억원).