South Korean AI chipmaker FuriosaAI has reportedly turned down an $800 million acquisition proposal from Meta, choosing instead to advance its own AI chip development and production efforts. According to local media, the deal fell apart due to differences in business strategy and organizational structure, rather than pricing concerns.

Meta, like many other tech giants investing in large language models (LLMs), has been working to reduce its dependence on Nvidia for high-performance AI chips. The company recently introduced its own custom AI processors and announced plans to invest up to $65 billion in AI infrastructure this year.

While neither FuriosaAI nor Meta have officially commented on the rejected offer, reports indicate that FuriosaAI is currently in discussions with investors to secure approximately $48 million (KRW 70 billion) in new funding, with the goal of closing the round this month.

Founded in 2017 by June Paik, a former engineer at Samsung Electronics and AMD, FuriosaAI has developed two AI chips, Warboy and Renegade (RNGD), to compete with industry leaders like Nvidia and AMD. The company has successfully tested the RNGD chip, which is optimized for reasoning models, in collaboration with LG AI Research and Aramco. LG AI Research is expected to integrate these chips into its AI infrastructure, and FuriosaAI plans to bring them to market later this year.