SEMIFIVE, a provider of custom AI semiconductor (ASIC) solutions, announced a design win from Niobium, a U.S.-based company focused on Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) hardware acceleration platforms. The contract is valued at approximately KRW 10 billion (USD 6.86 million) and involves the development of Niobium's high-performance FHE hardware accelerator. The accelerator is positioned as one of the first commercially viable FHE solutions, enabling computation on encrypted data at speeds suitable for cloud and AI infrastructure applications.
FHE supports computation directly on encrypted data without decryption, addressing needs in privacy-centric workloads, private cloud services, Zero Trust computing environments, and private AI. Niobium's dedicated accelerator aims to provide performance improvements over software-based approaches.
The chip will use Samsung Foundry's 8nm Low Power Ultimate (8LPU) process technology. SEMIFIVE will provide end-to-end ASIC services, including design, packaging, testing, and supply chain management.
Kevin Yoder, CEO of Niobium, stated that encrypted computation on data at sufficient speeds will make processing sensitive information in unencrypted form unacceptable. The collaboration with SEMIFIVE and Samsung Foundry advances the transition from prototype systems to production-ready accelerators for customer deployments in encrypted cloud and AI environments.
Brandon Cho, CEO and co-founder of SEMIFIVE, noted that Niobium's FHE accelerator represents an emerging architecture in privacy-first computing, and SEMIFIVE supports its realization through SoC development and platform execution.
Taejoong Song, vice president and head of Foundry Technology Planning at Samsung Electronics, indicated that encrypted computation will have a growing role in AI and cloud systems. Samsung Foundry's advanced process technology and SAFE ecosystem support SEMIFIVE and Niobium in delivering private computing silicon to global markets.
This partnership marks a step in SEMIFIVE's U.S. market expansion and diversifies its ASIC portfolio with complex private computing solutions.
