Export-Import Bank of Korea makes first-ever direct equity investment in AI chipmaker FuriosaAI

The Export-Import Bank of Korea said Tuesday it will make a 20 billion won ($13 million) equity investment in FuriosaAI, an AI chipmaker.

The investment — the bank’s first direct equity stake since its founding — will be made through the acquisition of redeemable convertible preferred shares, or RCPS, issued by FuriosaAI. The company is a fabless AI chip designer that develops neural processing units, or NPUs, for data center inference workloads. It began mass production of its second-generation chip, the RNGD (Renegade), this year.

The investment was made possible by the full implementation of amendments to the Export-Import Bank of Korea Act and its enforcement decree, which took effect June 24.

Under the revised law, the bank no longer needs to link direct investments to loans or guarantees it has extended. Previously, the bank could only invest in companies to which it had already provided loans or guarantees, making it difficult to back high-growth venture firms that lacked the financial standing to qualify for such support.

The amendments also expanded the scope of eligible vehicles for indirect investment beyond collective investment schemes under the Capital Markets Act to include venture investment associations under the Venture Investment Promotion Act and specialized new-technology finance companies under the Specialized Credit Finance Business Act.

The bank has been broadening its investment in companies central to the AI value chain in support of the government’s AI transformation policy.

With this direct investment, the bank said it has now built a portfolio spanning the full AI transformation value chain, from AI semiconductors to cloud infrastructure. In the first half of this year, the bank also made indirect investments through project funds in AI chipmaker Rebellions (20 billion won) and cloud company Megazone Cloud (20 billion won).

FuriosaAI is also the company that attracted 800 billion won in direct investment from the National Growth Fund. The government’s “three mega-projects,” announced Sunday, are expected to further raise the profile of domestic NPU companies, including FuriosaAI.

“We are strengthening investment as a new pillar of external policy finance, building on the recent amendments to the bank’s governing act and enforcement decree,” a bank official said. “We will work actively alongside the private sector to help Korean companies secure global competitiveness during this era of AI transformation.”

hyuk@heraldcorp.com