FuriosaAI rejects Meta’s $800 million takeover offer

Seoul : FuriosaAI, a South Korean artificial intelligence (AI) chip startup, has turned down an $800 million takeover offer from US tech giant Meta Platforms, industry sources said on Monday.

Baek Joon-ho, chief executive officer (CEO) of FuriosaAI, informed its employees that the company has decided not to proceed with takeover negotiations with Meta, according to the sources. He also notified the US company of its decision.

The move came as FuriosaAI has decided to continue the company’s independent development and production of AI chips, the sources said, reports Yonhap news agency.

Founded in 2017, FuriosaAI is a fabless semiconductor company specializing in AI inference chips for data centres.

Its flagship product, the RNGD processor, launched last year, is a new AI inference chip designed for high-performance data centres and capable of efficiently handling large language models (LLMs).

In February, news outlets reported that Meta was in talks to acquire FuriosaAI as part of its efforts to expand its in-house AI chip capabilities and reduce its reliance on AI chipmaker Nvidia Corp.

FuriosaAI said it was in discussions with US tech giant Meta over a possible takeover, with all options on the table.

The company has made headlines following a recent US report suggesting that Meta is considering acquiring the AI chip startup, with negotiations possibly concluding as early as this month.

“It would be ideal to secure investment without having to sell (the company), but unfortunately, we haven’t been able to raise funding at the scale we desire here in the country,” Jeong Young-beom, managing director at FuriosaAI, had said.

“Nothing has been decided yet. We are keeping all options open and will make the best choice,” he added.

According to the company, the mission is to build AI chips capable of running the world’s most advanced models efficiently.

“We believe this is a critical lever in making AI computing more sustainable for the next generation,” it said.