●The world’s top 30 semiconductor fabless companies
(Source – I researched and wrote it myself)
- As it is a larger market than the semiconductor equipment industry, we have listed it as one of the top 30 companies. IP Holder and EDA companies were included, and IDM companies were excluded.
- IP Holder : A company that does not design semiconductor chips but only provides IP, which is a design asset
- EDA: A provider of SW tools for semiconductor design
- IDM: Excluding companies that operate semiconductor design business but have manufacturing plants together
- Broadcom of the U.S. is finally the first in the world to break historical new highs the previous day. Nvidia has about 6% left in its historical new high.
- Broadcom broke historical highs before Nvidia, which has significant implications. Broadcom has strength in designing ASICs to meet customer requirements. Broadcom’s main customers are Google, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI.
- As competition to secure GPUs continues among big tech companies, on the other hand, big tech companies are accelerating their own AI accelerator design.
- Broadcom is strong in designing ASICs that take into account the best networking and cost-effectiveness of big tech companies. At the same time, it also has the technology of semiconductor chipsets for networking between GPUs and data centers in AI data centers. On top of that, we can also acquire VMware to provide a solution for verifying and operating the performance of AI accelerators in the data center.
- Marvell is a competitor who has strengths in ASIC design for big tech companies while designing communication semiconductor chipsets like Broadcom. Broadcom is considered more competitive because Marvell still has about 18% left in its historical high price.
- What Broadcom and Marvell have in common is that they are companies that have grown through M&A. The global fabless industry is an industry where M&A is actively conducted. I hope that large Korean companies will also actively conduct M&A.
- In the future, as the importance of the reasoning area increases for AI, networking and total cost will become important and the demand for ASIC chips will increase. The value chain related to this will require continuous attention in the future.
- The stock price flow of low-power semiconductor fabless companies is relatively good. I realize that power is a very important issue in the AI business.
- It was July 2023 when the market capitalization of Broadcom and Samsung Electronics was overtaken, but it is three times the difference after 15 months. I wish Samsung Electronics the best.
- None of the top 30 semiconductor fabless companies in the world are Korean companies. This is also the reason why Samsung Electronics, the second-largest foundry company in the world, is weak in competitiveness. In addition, unlike TSMC, Samsung Electronics has been in charge of design through its own LSI division, so there is a lack of efforts to grow its ecosystem.
- Among fabless companies listed in Korea, LX Semicon has the highest market capitalization. We are interested in which Korean companies will surpass $2B and be the first to enter the top 30 fabless companies in the world. Among unlisted companies, Revelion was recognized for $650 million in terms of financing value, DeepX was recognized for $530 million, and SemiFive was recognized for $350 million, and Puriosa AI is in the process of raising funds for $680 million.