FuriosaAI CEO Baek Jun-ho Says He Developed a Chip That Uses Less Power Than NVIDIA GPUs

【Jeju=Jo Eun-hyo】Baek Jun-ho, CEO of domestic AI chipmaker FuriosaAI, said on the 16th that "the key challenge in building AI data centers is ultimately power costs," adding that low-power AI semiconductors could be the answer. He noted that NVIDIA's Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) currently dominate the market, but stressed the need to focus on new AI chips with improved energy efficiency.
In a lecture at the Federation of Korean Industries Summer Jeju Forum for Executives held that day at Lotte Hotel Jeju, Baek analyzed trends in the global AI industry, centered on the competition for AI infrastructure and data centers. He also introduced FuriosaAI's efforts to innovate chips that consume less energy.
FuriosaAI unveiled its second-generation AI chip, Renegade (RNGD), in April. The company has said that Renegade offers far superior power efficiency compared with NVIDIA's competing products. Baek also said that major Korean conglomerates, including Samsung and LG Group, are in the final testing stage to adopt FuriosaAI chips. He explained that the chip was designed to maximize computing performance with minimal data movement, delivering better energy efficiency than GPUs.
Baek said demand is surging as AI services spread, and predicted that the center of AI data centers will also shift from training to inference. He said, "By 2030, the AI data center pipeline is expected to grow to 100 gigawatts (GW)." He added, "If that is converted into chip purchases, it will create demand worth trillions of won." He said the sharp rise in AI usage among office workers is also supporting that demand. "Just six months ago, office workers were using AI for one to two hours a day, but now they are using it for more than six hours a day, so token usage is increasing exponentially," he explained.
ehcho@fnnews.com Jo Eun-hyo Reporter