South Korean AI chip startup FuriosaAI said on Thursday, October 29, 2026, that it has raised $620 million (820 billion won) in a Series D round at a valuation of about $2.9 billion — roughly four times its previous mark. Why it matters: the round is one of the largest yet for a company building inference chips to compete with Nvidia, and South Korea’s state-backed National Growth Fund is its biggest single backer.
October 29, 2026
What happened
FuriosaAI, a Seoul-based chipmaker founded in 2017 and led by chief executive June Paik, announced the Series D on Thursday. The 820 billion won total came in above the company’s January target range of 450 billion to 750 billion won. Bloomberg put the post-money valuation at about 3.8 trillion won ($2.9 billion), up from roughly $735 million at its previous round.
The money is earmarked for expanding production and supply of RNGD, FuriosaAI’s second-generation AI inference chip, winning customers outside South Korea, and strengthening the software ecosystem around the hardware.
Who put the money in
South Korea’s National Growth Fund was the largest investor, committing 370 billion won (about $280 million). International investors contributed $110 million, led by US-based Infinitum Partners, with Jericho Capital, Worldline Capital, Singapore’s QUDA Capital and Abu Dhabi-based NeoFort Holding among the backers; Cisco’s investment arm also participated, according to Korean reporting.
Existing shareholders added 170 billion won in follow-on funding, including all three of the company’s seed investors — Naver, DSC Investment and KDB Capital — plus Kakao Investment and Nexttrans. The Export-Import Bank of Korea also took part, in what was reported as its first direct investment in a startup.
The chip it is selling
RNGD, FuriosaAI’s second-generation inference accelerator, entered mass production in January. Samsung SDS has launched a computing service built on the chip, and AI startup Upstage uses RNGD to power search summaries on the Daum portal. FuriosaAI has also been working with LG AI Research on technical validation and commercial use.
The company is additionally developing a third-generation accelerator with Broadcom, aimed at large-scale AI infrastructure. That roadmap is the real bet in this round: inference — running trained models, rather than training them — is where buyers are hunting hardest for cheaper, more power-efficient alternatives to Nvidia’s dominant hardware.
Why it matters
For readers, the plain take is that the Nvidia-alternative race is no longer a handful of US startups. A Korean chipmaker just raised more than half a billion dollars, with its own government’s growth fund as the anchor investor, to scale a chip that is already in production and in customer services. That does not make FuriosaAI a proven Nvidia rival — production volume, software maturity and customer wins outside Korea are still the tests ahead, and the valuation is a private-market mark, not a result. But $620 million buys a serious attempt, and everything AI, tested, means watching whether RNGD deployments grow from early services into the kind of volume that forces Nvidia to answer on price.
Frequently asked questions
How much did FuriosaAI raise?
FuriosaAI raised 820 billion won — about $620 million — in a Series D round announced on October 29, 2026, above its earlier target range.
What is FuriosaAI valued at now?
About 3.8 trillion won, or $2.9 billion, post-money — roughly four times its previous valuation of about $735 million, according to Bloomberg.
What does FuriosaAI make?
It makes RNGD, a second-generation AI inference chip that entered mass production in January 2026, and is developing a third-generation accelerator with Broadcom.
Who is FuriosaAI’s biggest new investor?
South Korea’s National Growth Fund, which committed 370 billion won (about $280 million), the largest single commitment in the round.
Sources: Bloomberg, MoneyToday via AI Affairs