[Radar M] Domestic trend of investment in system semiconductor is fabless and design house
Jiu Investment Co., Ltd. selected growth finance management company in July last year
Investment of 1 billion won in Gaon Chips, a design house
30% exhausted. 3 out of 4 major investment destinations fabless.
Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix have global capabilities in foundry sector that entrusts production of non-memory semiconductors. However, it does not stand out in fabless areas that design semiconductors like NVIDIA in the U.S. As demands for semiconductors have diversified with 5G, the Internet of Things, and self-driving cars, the ability to design and produce semiconductors to meet certain demands has become important, and investment and support in this field has naturally become active.
Even if we look at the investment destinations recently conducted by the semiconductor growth fund management companies, which were invested by the two conglomerates in July last year, we can see that the investment trend is maintained. Jiyu Investment, which formed a system semiconductor win-win investment association worth a total of 30.5 billion won by receiving 30 billion won from Korea Growth Finance last year, has exhausted about 30% of its investment so far, and more than 80% of them have been invested in fabless and design houses (a mid-term step between semiconductor designers and consignment producers, which serves as follow-up measures before designers hand over their designs to consigned producers).
The latest company invested by GU Investment is the design house GAONCHIPS. GAONCHIPS is also Samsung Electronics' official design house partner and is known to have the largest sales among unlisted design houses in Korea. GU Investment invested 1 billion won in December last year, the first time GAONCHIPS has attracted outside investment.
The inflow of funds into the design house can also be confirmed by AD Technology, the largest design house in Korea, which raised large-scale funds with paid-in capital increase last year. AD Technology is a company that conducts consulting and design that determines specifications of chips and has been active as a design house for Taiwan's TSMC until March last year. In the second half of last year alone, the company raised 67.4 billion won in paid-in capital increase and 11.8 billion won in additional capital through the exercise of convertible bonds.
GU Investment invested in four companies regarding system semiconductor, which is the main investment destination, and three of them are fabless companies except GAONCHIPS. Among fabless semiconductor use sites, investments were carried out mainly in automotive and artificial intelligence (AI), where markets are forming the fastest among large companies.
VSI, which invested about 1.5 billion won in September last year, is a company that develops 'high-speed link interface technology for vehicles'. It provides a function that can process information collected from sensors and displays that are installed in vehicles more than five times faster than before, and is receiving more attention as commercialization of self-driving cars becomes visible. It is a company that makes 'Nextchip' video analysis semiconductors for vehicles. Vehicles equipped with Nextchip products can recognize more diverse objects at higher resolution.
Rebellions is considered to have high technical skills in AI semiconductors. Park Sung-hyun, who worked as a developer at Morgan Stanley, and Oh Jin-wook, who was in charge of lead developer at IBM TJ Watson, have introduced clear technologies such as finance and medical services, along with outstanding human composition.
By Reporter Kang In-sun