Subj : South Korean startup, which walked away from Meta's $800M acquisi To : All From : TechnologyDaily Date : Mon Sep 15 2025 23:45:09 South Korean startup, which walked away from Meta's $800M acquisition bid, partnered with OpenAI to demonstrate the future of sustainable enterprise AI without GPUs Date: Mon, 15 Sep 2025 22:30:00 +0000 Description: FuriosaAI, which rejected Metas $800 million buyout offer, presented new sustainable AI demo with OpenAI in Seoul. FULL STORY ======================================================================FuriosaA I and OpenAI ran a chatbot in Seoul demo using custom RNGD chips The Korean startup rejected Metas $800 million buyout offer earlier this year Demonstration showed enterprise AI models can run sustainably without GPUs FuriosaAI and OpenAI recently held a joint demonstration in Seoul, South Korea, at the opening of OpenAIs new office, showing the open-weight gpt-oss 120B model running on FuriosaAIs hardware. The demonstration (which you can watch below) featured a real-time chatbot powered by two of FuriosaAIs RNGD accelerators (pronounced Renegade), the companys flagship AI inference chip. The model was run using MXFP4 precision, a format which lowers energy consumption while maintaining the accuracy needed for enterprise use. Meta who? FuriosaAI was the only hardware company invited to take part in the event and the setup demonstrated that large-scale open-source models can operate within the power budgets of standard data centers, without the heavy energy costs and infrastructure requirements often associated with GPUs. Founded in 2017 by Chief Executive June Paik, FuriosaAI specializes in AI chip design and employs around 140 staff. More than 90 percent are developers, including engineers with experience at Google, Qualcomm, and Samsung. The companys RNGD flagship product was first presented at Hot Chips 2024. It is a high-performance AI inference chip built on TSMCs 5nm process, with dual HBM3 memory, and based on FuriosaAIs Tensor Contraction Processor architecture. The design improves efficiency by maximizing parallelism and reducing unnecessary computation. FuriosaAI recently secured a $125 million Series C bridge funding round and signed a partnership with LG AI Research. The companys hardware has already been used in enterprise deployments and tested for efficiency and reliability. The startup has also drawn interest from global technology firms. We reported back in April that Meta had made an $800 million (1.2 trillion won) offer for the firm. FuriosaAI rejected the acquisition , despite it being roughly $300 million dollars over the startups estimated market value, because it disagreed with the planned direction post-acquisition. Industry observers say the Seoul demonstration points to the increasing importance of specialized hardware as AI models continue to grow in size and complexity. With energy and infrastructure costs continuing to soar, startups like FuriosaAI are pushing their chips as an affordable solution that fits within enterprise budgets. You might also like South Korea's hottest AI hardware startup said no to $800m acquisition by Meta OpenAI for-profit restructuring given go-ahead by Microsoft in new non-binding deal Nvidia's biggest customers are lining up to take it down thanks to Broadcom ====================================================================== Link to news story: https://www.techradar.com/pro/south-korean-startup-which-walked-away-from-meta s-usd800m-acquisition-bid-partnered-with-openai-to-demonstrate-the-future-of-s ustainable-enterprise-ai-without-gpus --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 (Linux/64) * Origin: tqwNet Technology News (1337:1/100) .