SEMIFIVE has secured a 70.3 billion won contract to develop an AI chip for a US-based fabless semiconductor company, Korea's The Elec reported. The deal marks one of the larger single-customer engagements disclosed by the Korean chip design solutions provider in the artificial intelligence segment.

The contract value of 70.3 billion won converts to roughly $51 million at current exchange rates. The US fabless customer behind the order has not been named in the disclosure.

SEMIFIVE operates in the semiconductor design asset and custom silicon business. The company builds design platforms and system-on-chip integration services that fabless customers use to shorten development timelines for application-specific processors. AI accelerators have become a key demand driver for this model, as companies without in-house design teams or with compressed schedules look to assemble chips from proven building blocks rather than develop every block from scratch.

The agreement puts SEMIFIVE in the supply chain for US AI silicon demand at a time when fabless spending on custom accelerator development continues to grow. The 70.3 billion won figure represents committed contract value for the chip development work covered by the deal.

For SEMIFIVE, the order strengthens its position in the AI chip design services market, where Korean design asset firms compete for engagements from global fabless customers alongside established design services providers in Taiwan, the United States and India. Contracts of this size indicate multi-month to multi-year development programs rather than one-off consulting work.

The company has not disclosed the technical specifications of the chip, the target workload, the process node, or the expected delivery schedule for the engagement. No timeline for tape-out or production has been made public.

The award follows broader industry momentum in custom AI silicon, with cloud providers, system companies and startups commissioning accelerators to run inference and training workloads. Each such program typically requires a design partner to integrate processor cores, memory subsystems and interconnects into a manufacturable SoC.

Details on payment milestones, IP ownership arrangements and volume production options tied to the 70.3 billion won contract were not part of the disclosure.