Two South Korean members of the AI Platform Alliance – a group that advocates an open alternative to Nvidia – have proposed a merger to accelerate their work and achieve greater scale, and perhaps give local chipmaker SK hynix a way into the market for AI silicon.
The partners are named Sapeon and Rebellions. The former offers a CPU designed for inferencing workloads called the X330, plus servers to house them. Rebellions offers a SoC designed to run large language models, plus an NPU design., the telco revealed the AI outfits have agreed to the merger as they feel it will enable the creation of an entity capable of competing in global markets.
The two have apparently decided that timing is of the essence, as the next two or three years are perceived as a"golden time" in which to establish companies capable of becoming major AI players. A quick merger is therefore planned, with Q3 targeted for completion of the deal and launch of an integrated business planned to happen before the end of 2024.It's unclear if that means manufacturing them.
SK hynix and SK Telecom now assert that mashing up Sapeon and Rebellions will do the same – and that the nation can only benefit from the creation of such a combo and a move into chips for AI.Are our IT decisions costing the planet?16Dominant AI players Nvidia, Microsoft, OpenAI face US antitrust inquiries