South Korean artificial intelligence chipmakers are accelerating their push into overseas markets. As mass-produced neural processing units, or NPUs, arrive one after another, companies are moving beyond domestic pilot projects and performance testing to secure actual customers and use cases abroad. FuriosaAI is pursuing a supply deal for several thousand NPUs to a European data center and has set up a new sales base for the Asia-Pacific region, while DEEPX and Mobilint are widening their channels into the United States, China, Japan and Europe. Analysts say the next battleground for Korean NPUs in a global AI chip market centered on Nvidia is shifting to securing overseas references.
FuriosaAI recently established a local unit, FuriosaAI Singapore, according to the AI chip industry. The Singapore unit handles business development, sales and technical support across the Asia-Pacific region, including Southeast Asia. It plans to expand adoption of the company’s second-generation NPU, RNGD, among corporations, governments, cloud service providers and infrastructure firms. The move adds an Asian base alongside the Seoul headquarters, Silicon Valley in the United States and Lisbon, Portugal.
The expansion of overseas bases follows RNGD’s entry into mass production and commercialization. FuriosaAI began mass-producing RNGD in January and received an initial 4,000 units from TSMC and ASUS. Samsung SDS and the LG AI Research Institute are currently using RNGD, and Samsung SDS launched an RNGD-based NPU-as-a-service, or NPUaaS, offering in July. FuriosaAI said the Singapore unit was set up to convert customers in early evaluation stages into actual commercial deployments.
A large-scale supply project is also under way in Europe. FuriosaAI is taking part in a project to build a 15-megawatt AI data center in Stockholm with I/ONX HPC, a U.S. AI infrastructure company, and Velox, a data center developer and operator. I/ONX plans to deploy 1,800 RNGD units in the first phase, targeted to begin operating in early 2027, and to add more than 7,000 units in subsequent expansion phases. FuriosaAI supplies the RNGD chips, drivers and software stack. In July, the company began installing RNGD servers at the Equinix LS2 data center in Lisbon, creating an environment where European companies can verify performance and usability on site.
DEEPX, which develops on-device AI chips, is also winning more actual orders overseas. The company said its DX-M1 had secured 77 commercial purchase orders worth more than $13 million through the end of July across more than 10 countries and regions, including South Korea, the United States, China, Europe, Taiwan and Japan. Applications have expanded to eight industries, including robotics, smart factories and manufacturing automation, health care, and video surveillance and security.
Mobilint recently put its AI system-on-chip, Regulus, into mass production and began supplying it in earnest at home and abroad. Overseas, the company is expanding deliveries to the United States, Germany, Taiwan and Japan. It is targeting the on-device AI market in manufacturing, retail and security by supplying not only standalone NPUs but also system-on-modules, single-board computers and USB-type accelerators.
Rebellions is likewise pursuing commercial references abroad with Rebel100, its data center NPU. The company plans to supply an initial mass-production batch of Rebel100 to Saudi Aramco in the first half of 2027. Although the deal is still ahead of delivery, the industry sees it as a stepping stone for wider global sales, because it involves supplying actual mass-produced chips to an overseas customer rather than merely passing quality tests.
Korean NPU makers are putting weight on overseas sales channels because chip performance alone is not enough to break into the global ecosystem Nvidia has built. Companies adopting a new AI accelerator must weigh not only computing performance and power efficiency but also a track record of stable operation in real services, software compatibility, supply capacity and technical support. Winning a single commercial customer abroad becomes a reference that draws the next one.
Korean NPU companies also pointed to securing real-world references as the key task for going global at a policy forum on expanding NPU exports and diversifying sales channels, held at the National Assembly on the 10th. “A reference showing that you are actually running AI services is the most important thing in overseas business,” said Park Sung-hyun, chief executive of Rebellions.
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Original reporting by Seo Ji-hye for Seoul Economic Daily.
AI-translated from Korean. Quotes from foreign sources are based on Korean-language reports and may not reflect exact original wording.
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