SemiFive is making visible progress in expanding into Japan. SemiFive, a company specialising in custom chip (ASIC) design, said on Thursday it signed a contract with a Japanese AI semiconductor customer to supply mass-produced AI semiconductors for high-performance computing (HPC). The deal is worth about 11 billion won. The volume will be supplied in stages from the second half of this year, and follow-on contracts are expected to continue.

SemiFive set up a corporation in Tokyo in 2025 and has built a local customer support system. With the spread of generative AI and rising global investment in AI infrastructure, demand is rapidly increasing for HPC semiconductors that support large-scale computing in data centre and server environments. Japan is also expanding investment in AI and advanced semiconductors to secure technological competitiveness.

The contract is an additional achievement following record quarterly results in the first quarter of this year. SemiFive said it won mass-production supply contracts mainly from domestic customers in the first quarter, reaching 74 percent of last year's total annual mass-production order value in a single quarter. It also secured additional overseas customer orders in the second quarter, expanding the revenue base for mass production as an overseas pipeline was added to its existing domestic pipeline.

SemiFive CEO Myung-hyun Cho (조명현) said, "Winning this mass-production project order is a turning point for entering a global mass-production growth cycle." He said the company would continue global growth accompanied by profitability based on its proven advanced-process platform capabilities and mass-production pipeline.