Lee Jae-myung, the then-presidential candidate of the Democratic Party of Korea, is taking a commemorative photo with Baek Joon-ho, the CEO of FuriosaAI, at FuriosaAI in Gangnam, Seoul, on the 14th./Courtesy of National Assembly Photographic Reporting Team

This article was published on June 5, 2025, at 2:48 p.m. on the ChosunBiz MoneyMove website.

Casestone Partners, a private equity fund (PEF) management firm, has invested 20 billion won in the artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor development startup, Furiosa AI. This is a Series C bridge investment, and Furiosa AI is said to have secured over 100 billion won in total investment in this round.

Furiosa AI is wrapping up this round and will begin raising Series D investment in the second half of the year. President Lee Jae-myung has emphasized multiple times that he will open the era of 100 trillion won in AI investment, leading the market to expect an overall improvement in investment sentiment in this field. Furiosa AI is also the first place President Lee visited after announcing his candidacy.

According to investment banking (IB) industry sources on the 5th, Casestone Partners has decided to invest 20 billion won in Furiosa AI. The plan is to finalize the closing (investment payment) within this month. The corporation's value, based on pre-investment, is over 800 billion won.

It is rare for private equity (PE) to jump into investments in AI semiconductor startups dominated by venture capital (VC). Since early-stage technology companies that have yet to turn a profit typically take a significant amount of time to recover after investment, they are generally perceived as belonging to the realm of VC. In fact, apart from some shareholders like Naver and the Korea Development Bank, Furiosa AI's shareholders are mostly composed of VCs such as DSC Investment and Quantum Ventures.

The reason Casestone Partners decided on this investment is believed to be their strong confidence in Furiosa AI's technology. Furiosa AI is planning to launch its second-generation neural processing unit (NPU), "Renegade," in the second half of this year. They are scheduled to supply the product to domestic conglomerates next month.

Renegade is characterized by its enhanced performance relative to power consumption. It supports 512 teraflops (TFLOPS), capable of performing 512 trillion operations per second, while limiting maximum power consumption to 150W. It is assessed to have 60% greater power efficiency than NVIDIA's latest AI chip.

Furiosa AI is expected to benefit from new government policies. President Lee officially announced his candidacy for the presidential election on the 14th of last month and visited Furiosa AI as part of his first agenda, during which he stated on Facebook, "I will open the era of 100 trillion won in AI investment" and pledged to increase related budget levels beyond those of developed countries. Moreover, the President indicated that he would secure over 50,000 GPU, a core asset for AI, and actively support the development and verification of AI-specific neural processing units (NPUs) to secure technological sovereignty.

With Furiosa AI securing over 100 billion won in this round, its post-investment corporate value is estimated to reach nearly 1 trillion won. They plan to seek Series D investment in the second half of this year.