National Growth Fund to Directly Invest 800 Billion Won in FuriosaAI

Fostering AI Semiconductors, Data Centers, and Biotechnology
Cumulative Financial Support Reaches 12.5 Trillion Won

The National Growth Fund has decided to directly invest 800 billion won in FuriosaAI, a domestic artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor development company.

Yonhap News Agency

According to the Financial Services Commission on May 29, the National Growth Fund's Investment Review Committee, held the previous day, approved a total of five cases, including the FuriosaAI investment, amounting to 4.14 trillion won in direct investments, infrastructure investment and loans.

The support for FuriosaAI is aimed at developing next-generation AI chips utilizing High Bandwidth Memory (HBM)4 and fostering the domestic AI semiconductor industry ecosystem. The National Growth Fund will provide a total of 800 billion won, including a direct investment of 370 billion won from the Advanced Strategic Industry Fund, for the design and mass production of neural processing units (NPUs).

An official from the Financial Services Commission stated, "FuriosaAI is a company with independent competitiveness in the field of design and is expected to demonstrate a competitive edge in the global market," adding, "We approved a direct investment of approximately 800 billion won to help the company overcome funding challenges during the full-scale mass production stage and to enable it to grow into a global leading company without any capital gaps."

To secure AI infrastructure, the National Growth Fund will also support a total of 500 billion won in equity investments and subordinated loans—250 billion won each—for Smilegate Group's project to build two data centers. This is expected to enhance AI content production capabilities and reduce dependence on global big tech data centers.

Additionally, the fund decided to provide a 300 billion won loan to SK bioscience, which is currently developing a phase 3 pneumococcal vaccine. This is projected to contribute to entry into the next-generation premium vaccine market and to securing vaccine sovereignty.

For the LFP (lithium, iron, phosphate) secondary battery cathode mass production business promoted by L&F's subsidiary, L&F Plus, a 220 billion won low-interest loan will be provided over 12 years.

Keunwoo, a company in Eumseong, Chungbuk, that produces power distribution panels for AI data centers, has been approved for a 20 billion won low-interest loan over 10 years. This is expected to expand production and installation capabilities for power equipment required to build AI data centers.

With these approvals, the National Growth Fund's cumulative financial support now totals 16 cases, amounting to 12.5 trillion won.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.