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Minister Lee Young of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups is taking a commemorative photo with selected companies at the 'Fabless Challenge Competition' held on the 27th at Tipstown, Yeoksam, Gangnam-gu, Seoul.
[Photo by Ministry of SMEs and Startups]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwak Min-jae] The Ministry of SMEs and Startups and Samsung Electronics have stepped up to support promising fabless companies (design-specialized firms) that find it difficult to create prototypes and verify new products due to foundry supply shortages.

On the 27th, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups announced that it held the ‘Fabless Challenge Competition’ jointly with Samsung Electronics at Tipstown in Yeoksam-dong, Seoul, to select promising fabless companies. This competition is the first event to fulfill the Yoon Seok-yeol administration’s promise of win-win cooperation between large and small-medium enterprises.

The selected companies are DeepX, GLS, SkyChips, SemiBrain, and RaonTech. These companies participated in the award ceremony and presented their visions. The Ministry of SMEs and Startups selected the final five innovative fabless companies from the applicants through a month-long step-by-step evaluation by experts.

Minister Lee Young of the Ministry of SMEs and Startups expressed in his encouragement speech, “It is moving to have the opportunity to discover and support companies with the potential to lead South Korea’s future economy and technology,” and added, “It was especially meaningful to work together with Samsung Electronics, a representative global company of South Korea.”

Following this, the representatives of the selected companies shared their impressions. Kim Nok-won, CEO of DeepX, said, “It is an honor to be selected as an excellent company in the Fabless Challenge Competition,” and added, “Given the importance of the system semiconductor industry, it is necessary for South Korea to have fabless companies that can compete with global companies such as Intel and Qualcomm.”

Choi Si-young, President of Samsung Electronics, congratulated the finally selected fabless companies and said, “As semiconductor competition intensifies worldwide today, cooperation among foundries, fabless companies, and SoBuJang (materials, parts, and equipment) is crucial to overcoming this,” adding, “This competition is a great opportunity for the public and private sectors to join forces to foster the domestic system semiconductor industry.”

Samsung Electronics provides 25 MPW (Multi-Project Wafer) services for 12 processes ranging from 5 to 130 nanometers through its foundry. The selected fabless companies will choose desired processes within a monthly schedule from August this year to July next year to carry out their projects.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups supports the required costs in the form of vouchers up to 100 million KRW per company. The selected fabless companies autonomously choose the fields of use such as design houses, foundries, and post-processing to carry out their projects.

The Ministry of SMEs and Startups has been promoting various support policies addressing the three major difficulties faced by fabless companies in the system semiconductor ecosystem: funding, manpower, and win-win cooperation. To support startup companies’ funding, it provides a package of early commercialization funds, R&D, loans, and guarantees. Considering the fabless companies’ characteristic of requiring huge initial capital, the operating fund support limit has been more than doubled from 500 million KRW to 1 billion KRW.

According to the Ministry, a total of 20 students have been employed by domestic fabless companies through the semiconductor design specialized course at the newly established National Meister High School (formerly Gumi Electronics Technical High School) last year. This year, system semiconductor contract departments will be newly established at two major universities.

Minister Lee Young stated, “Win-win cooperation does not simply mean that large companies help small companies, but that they cooperate and grow together,” and added, “Through this Fabless Challenge Competition, we hope Samsung Electronics will secure prospective unicorn fabless companies, and fabless companies will accelerate new technology development, creating a true win-win case of mutual growth.”

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