FuriosaAI forays into North American AI chip market, welcomes former Intel and Western Digital VPs

• FuriosaAI develops high performance AI accelerators targeted at data centers and enterprise customers. The company offers efficient AI hardware with a robust and flexible compiler that makes it easier for customers to deploy their models. 
• The company targets the NA market with its first generation chip "WARBOY", set to begin volume production in Q1 2023. FuriosaAI is already sampling WARBOY with customers in South Korea. 
• Bill Leszinske, a former leader at Intel joins FuriosaAI as Senior Advisor. FuriosaAI also appoints former Western Digital VP, Tom Gallivan, as VP of North American Sales and Business Development.        

SEOUL, South Korea, July 12, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- FuriosaAI, the AI accelerator company with a robust and flexible software stack, announces the appointment of Bill Leszinske as Senior Advisor, and Tom Gallivan as Vice President of North American Sales and Business Development. Leszinske and Gallivan will enable the rapidly growing startup to expand its reach into the North American market.

Founded in 2017, FuriosaAI develops high performance AI inference accelerators targeted at enterprise customers and hyperscale data centers. The company is backed by significant clients, including South Korea's largest internet company Naver. So far, FuriosaAI has attracted over USD 100 million in investments. The company has maintained a balance of hardware and software engineers since its establishment, focusing on in-house full stack software development. This comprehensive organizational structure has allowed FuriosaAI to offer a robust and flexible compiler, and an SDK that automatically optimizes and quantizes models. 

Since completing development of its first generation chip, WARBOY, in July 2021, FuriosaAI has consistently submitted results to the AI chip benchmark, MLPerf. In the latest round of MLPerf Inference (v2.0), the company enhanced its benchmark performance by 2x on the same silicon compared to previous v1.1 submission purely through compiler enhancements. Naver (KRX: 035420) and Kakao (KRX: 035720) , Korea's two largest tech companies, as well as AI startups in various application fields, have been sampling FuriosaAI's WARBOY ahead of the chip's mass production.

Bill Leszinske, a former Intel CVP, brings more than 30 years of experience running product planning and marketing, including his crucial role in driving revenue growth at Intel's SSD business. Leszinske is also experienced in AI chips—after leaving Intel, he joined AI chip startup Groq to manage products, software development, and marketing. "I am really excited to be working with the FuriosaAI team," Leszinske stated, "the maturity of FuriosaAI's software stack makes it easier for customers to deploy AI solutions to address their business needs."

Tom Gallivan has more than 30 years of experience in technology sales, with industry success at Seagate, Sun Microsystems, Rackable Systems, and Western Digital. Gallivan has deep industry experience introducing new technologies and building winning sales teams in North America. 

FuriosaAI's CEO June Paik commented, "with speedy and robust execution, FuriosaAI is on track to deliver competitive products to the market. Our strength lies in intense co-development of innovative HW architecture and SW stack, including the compiler. We will continue to invite experts like Bill and Tom to build an industry leading team in North America." 

Customers sampling WARBOY have given highly positive feedback on the chip's performance and efficiency. WARBOY goes into mass production in Q1 2023. Meanwhile, FuriosaAI is continuing to broaden supported target applications in its roadmap, including transformer-based Foundation models for hyperscale data centers.

For more information visit www.furiosa.ai