South Korea's iHW (아이에이치더블유) Bets on Analog Compute-in-Memory: KRW 52 Billion Series A

An ultra-low-power AI semiconductor fabless company developing the AI chip Infertron with a neuromorphic + analog compute-in-memory architecture, targeting edge AI, humanoid robot SoCs, and data centers.

Betting AI's next bottleneck is electricity, using analog compute-in-memory for low-power chips on mature nodes, beating digital NPUs in edge markets.

Series A of KRW 52 billion (about USD 37.5 million), cumulative fundraising of KRW 64 billion; additionally received more than USD 10 million in support from government AI semiconductor projects.

iHW was founded in June 2024 by senior executives and engineers from global semiconductor companies including Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Intel, starting as a 'next-generation computing architecture' research group. The company targets the AI industry's increasingly severe power consumption and heat dissipation burden: data centers are repeatedly delayed or face resident opposition due to power and cooling issues, while edge AI is constrained by battery capacity.

The company developed the ultra-low-power AI chip Infertron, which uses an analog compute-in-memory structure to perform computation directly at the same location where weights are stored, reducing data movement while lowering power consumption and latency; the chip needs no external DRAM or flash memory, can operate on a single chip, and can be implemented on mature process nodes. In 2025, iHW won multiple government AI semiconductor projects, receiving more than USD 10 million (about KRW 14.1 billion) in funding, and co-developed a low-power SoC for humanoid robots with the Korea Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (KETI).

On August 19, 2026, the company announced the completion of a KRW 52 billion Series A round led by Kolon Investment (科隆投资), with existing shareholders Woori Venture Partners, Mirae Asset (未来资产), and DSC Investment following on, Korea Development Bank (韩国产业银行) entering as a new investor, and LIG Defense & Aerospace (LIG防务与航空航天), together with IBK Capital (IBK资本), participating; cumulative fundraising reached KRW 64 billion. The funds will be used for mass production of edge AI chips, pilot production of LLM chips, and market development.

AI's constraint shifted from compute to electricity: data centers face power delays, edge devices battery limits, making power a monetizable pain.

ACiM computes at weight storage, saving data movement power and latency, using mature nodes to avoid high costs.

Team from Samsung, SK Hynix, Intel brings mass-production experience and networks, making fabless credible.

Government projects validated the tech early, so Series A came after proof, not just pitch.

When rivals chase advanced nodes, a contrarian bet on power-efficient chips can raise money: treat power and heat as product definitions, not details.

As of August 19, 2026, iHW completed the KRW 52 billion Series A and announced it would direct funds to mass production of edge AI chips, pilot production and marketing of LLM chips, and headcount expansion, while continuing to advance the joint development of a low-power SoC for humanoid robots with KETI. The company has not disclosed a product mass-production timeline or revenue; Kolon Investment assessed that it had passed silicon validation of core modules and has the potential to capture the edge market.