Paek Joungho, CEO of Furiosa AI: "Inference-Oriented AI Data Centers Will Become the Largest Semiconductor Market"

Lecture at Korea Employers Federation Jeju Summer Forum
"Energy Efficiency is the Core Competitiveness of AI Semiconductors"

Paek Joungho, CEO of Furiosa AI, stated on July 16, "The central axis of new AI data centers being built will shift from 'training' to 'inference,' and inference-type data centers will become the largest category in the entire semiconductor sector in the future."

Paek Joungho, CEO of Furiosa AI, attended the "2026 Korea Economic Association Summer Management Forum" held at Lotte Hotel in Jeju on the 16th and gave a lecture titled "AI Infrastructure Hegemony War, The Era of Data Centers That Has Already Begun." The Korea Economic Association

At the "2026 Korea Economic Association Summer Management Forum" held at Lotte Hotel in Seogwipo, Jeju, on the same day, Paek gave a lecture titled "AI Infrastructure Hegemony War, The Era of Data Centers That Has Already Begun," and shared these views. He said, "It is projected that the pipeline for AI data centers will expand to 100 GW (gigawatts) by 2030," adding, "when converted into chip purchases, this will result in demand worth several quadrillion won."

He explained that the surge in AI usage among office workers is also fueling this demand. Paek said, "Just six months ago, office workers used AI for about 1–2 hours a day, but now the amount of token usage has exponentially increased to over six hours a day."

Paek pointed to energy efficiency as the reason for the need to introduce new AI semiconductors in a market still dominated by GPUs. He stated, "The fundamental cost of AI is energy," emphasizing, "Since ensuring sufficient power supply is the greatest challenge in building data centers, using less energy is the core of AI semiconductor technology."

He went on to explain, "The shift from gasoline cars to electric vehicles is also to improve energy efficiency; the same principle applies to the trend of AI semiconductors replacing GPUs." However, he added, "Just as charging infrastructure is essential for the growth of electric vehicles, ecosystem-wide developments such as advances in software and algorithms are essential for widespread adoption of AI semiconductors."

Paek also revealed that Furiosa AI is currently commercializing its chips, with Korean conglomerates such as Samsung and LG, as well as global companies, either adopting them or proceeding through the final stages of testing. He said, "We have designed the chips to maximize computing power with minimal data transfer, which is resulting in superior energy efficiency compared to GPUs."

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