Pado Marks 10th Anniversary: "Now Ready to Deliver Results on the Global Stage"

Commemorative Press Conference Held in Jongno-gu, Seoul on the 27th
Vision Unveiled for the "Third-Generation AI Era"
CEO Jiho Lee: "Aiming to Grow as a Leading Fabless Company"

Jiho Lee, CEO of Pado, a company specializing in data center semiconductors, stated that the company "has overcome countless challenges over the past 10 years and is now at a stage where it can demonstrate results in the global market." He also expressed his ambition, saying, "As a fabless company representing South Korea, we will grow into a global leading enterprise."

Pado CEO Ji Hyo Lee is presenting the Pado 2.0 vision under the theme of leading the AI market centered on global big tech companies at a press conference held to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the company's founding. Photo by Pado

At a press conference held on the 27th at Club 806 in Jongno-gu, Seoul, to mark the company's 10th anniversary, CEO Lee made these remarks. He emphasized, "The experience we have gained by competing at the forefront of the global semiconductor war is our most valuable asset," adding that the company will leverage this as a weapon to compete on the world stage.

On this day, Pado explained the evolution of data centers across three generations and unveiled its vision for the "third-generation artificial intelligence (AI) era," where technology and the market landscape are shifting toward a focus on graphics processing units (GPUs).

Pado was founded in 2015 by researchers from the Storage Architecture Laboratory at Seoul National University. The company succeeded in securing global customers with its first product, the Gen3 SSD controller, but faced difficulties acquiring customers for the Gen4 controller due to a market downturn. However, with the rapid growth of the AI market, the Gen5 controller began full-scale supply at the end of last year, and the company expects record-high sales this year.

CEO Lee reflected, "From the beginning, we anticipated that semiconductors would become the core of all industries, and we believed that the cloud data center market would drive semiconductor demand." He explained, "We started with the goal of building a global system semiconductor fabless company based on Korea's technological strength as a semiconductor powerhouse."

Pado highlights "performance-per-watt based on innovative architecture" as the key strength of its products. Building on this, the company has established sales and development teams in major global hubs such as the United States, China, Taiwan, and Poland, simultaneously pursuing customer diversification and talent acquisition. Currently, Pado is focusing on developing its next-generation Gen6 controller, with the goal of eventually securing all four global hyperscalers as clients. The company also plans to begin full-scale collaboration with more than half of the world's top six NAND flash memory semiconductor companies.

Pado has also set forth a strategy to evolve beyond AI data center solid-state drives (SSDs) by expanding into next-generation AI storage, while integrating AI into the semiconductor development process to maximize productivity and transform into an AI-driven fabless company.

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