The backup force for Korean fabless counts down to the global market entry 

ASICLAND is a VC-backed design house that has provided a total solution for system semiconductors since its founding in 2016. 

Design houses in the semiconductor industry re-design fabless companies' designs to fit particular foundries. 

Putting aside many local design houses in South Korea, ASICLAND ramped its revenue up to about $47M in 7-year-old of such a short period by leveraging its distinct strengths. The most notable competitiveness of this company is that it is the exclusive Korean partner of TSMC, a global foundry leader. TSMC strikes across the partnership with 8 companies worldwide under the name of Value Chain Alliance(VCA), and ASICLAND is the only one as a Korean local company. Not to mention that it provides Korean fabless companies seeking to develop chips using TSMC’s technology with a TSMC-dedicated total solution. 

ASICLAND built a design automation platform and registered its trademark, AWorld Platform™. The platform has been constructed since ‘Level 0’ services entail an initial design stage with customers, which requires some patterned routines due to e.g. changes in specification. Various advantages have also followed after the introduction of the automation platform, such as fewer human errors, shortened development time, and ensured stable quality. This technological infrastructure led this company to receive some proposals from US and China, despite not being in the international market in earnest yet. The US has been identified as a rich mine of tremendous potential clients for design houses since it is a fabless-centric market among many different models of the system IC industry.

ASICLAND is now girding for an IPO aiming for the last half of next year. In addition to selecting a lead underwriter last year, the company is now in the process of going public, and it hopes to enforce its business by expanding its manpower and penetrating global markets after IPO.

As CEO of ASICLAND, Jongmin LEE said, "our biggest goal is to successfully carry out high-volume manufacturing of Sapeon's next generation AI processor and then enter the global market by 2023," and added with ambition, "ASICLAND's dependableness, as demonstrated by its long relationship with Korea big customers, will undoubtedly become a growing momentum and enable us to compete effectively with other major global players.”

Source: The DONG-A ILBO

(https://www.donga.com/news/Economy/article/all/20221217/117040226/9)