A $52 million contract, the company's largest

SEMIFIVE has signed a contract worth about KRW 70.3 billion ($52 million) with a US-based AI fabless company to develop a next-generation AI inference accelerator chip. The Seoul-based custom ASIC provider called it the largest single contract in the company's history. The deal alone equals more than 40% of SEMIFIVE's total orders of KRW 168.4 billion in 2025, and about 60% of the KRW 118.9 billion in new orders the company booked in the first half of 2026.

SEMIFIVE's first spec hand-off deal in North America

The project marks SEMIFIVE's first Spec Hand-off engagement in the North American market. Under that model, the customer supplies only its key performance requirements and specifications. SEMIFIVE then takes on the rest of the development process itself, including detailed design, software development, packaging, testing and mass production. That differs from a conventional turnkey engagement, where a customer typically finishes the chip design before handing off manufacturing and later-stage work. Specialized ASIC companies are taking on a broader role earlier in the design process across the custom semiconductor market. Google and Amazon, for instance, have worked with Broadcom and Marvell to build their own AI silicon.

Chip design targets memory and data bottlenecks

The accelerator will use LPDDR6, a next-generation low-power DRAM technology, to cut memory-related power consumption, along with PCIe Gen5 to reduce bottlenecks in high-volume data transfers. SEMIFIVE plans to draw on its experience with Big Die projects of up to 800 mm² to build an architecture aimed at high compute throughput and operational stability.

Tape-out in 2027, mass production the year after

SEMIFIVE and its customer are targeting tape-out in the first half of 2027, followed by global mass production starting in 2028. The chip is aimed at global hyperscalers and cloud service providers. "Demand is accelerating for custom silicon optimized for each customer's services and workloads," SEMIFIVE CEO and co-founder Brandon Cho said.