THE ESSENTIALS IN 30 SECONDS

  • FuriosaAI raised 820 billion won in a Series D, which the company converts to $620 million, at a valuation of about 3.8 trillion won (roughly $2.9 billion by its count).
  • Korea's National Growth Fund is the largest investor with 370 billion won; Infinitum, Cisco Investments and the Export-Import Bank of Korea are among the new backers.
  • The RNGD accelerator has been in mass production since January, with 20,000 units planned for 2026 and more than 40,000 for 2027.

FuriosaAI, the Seoul-based designer of chips for running AI models, announced on October 29 that it has completed a Series D round of 820 billion won. The company's English-language release gives the figure as $620 million and puts its post-money valuation at about $2.9 billion, or roughly 3.8 trillion won. Korean media describe it as the largest round so far for a domestic AI chip startup.

Two dollar figures, one round

Readers may see different dollar amounts for the same deal. The Seoul Economic Daily converts 820 billion won to about $570 million and the valuation to about $2.6 billion, while FuriosaAI's release uses $620 million and $2.9 billion. Neither source states the exchange rate applied, but the gap is consistent with a different won-to-dollar rate rather than a different round size: the won amounts match across all three sources.

According to Digital Today, the round opened in January with a target of 450 to 750 billion won and was enlarged because of investor demand.

Who is investing

South Korea's National Growth Fund is the largest single investor, with 370 billion won (about $280 million in the company's conversion). Overseas investors contributed a combined $110 million, with US firm Infinitum the largest among them, alongside QUDA Capital, Cisco Investments, NeoFort Holding, Jericho Capital and Worldline Capital. Existing shareholders added 170 billion won, including a further 30 billion won from Korea Development Bank, and seed backers Naver, DSC Investment and KDB Capital returned. Among new domestic participants, UAMCO put in 40 billion won, and the Export-Import Bank of Korea made what Korean outlets report is its first direct investment in a startup.

Chips, customers and what comes next

FuriosaAI's second-generation accelerator, RNGD, entered mass production in January 2026. The company says it expects to produce 20,000 units this year and more than 40,000 in 2027. It names LG Group, which runs EXAONE models on RNGD, search-summary deployments at Upstage, and an NPU-as-a-service offering that Samsung SDS launched in July as production users.

The money will go to expanding RNGD output, building out the software stack and developing a third-generation accelerator with Broadcom aimed at hyperscale data centres. Those production targets and the timing of the next chip are company projections. FuriosaAI, which has offices in the United States, Portugal and Singapore, competes in a market for inference hardware still dominated by Nvidia GPUs.