Park Jae-hong, CEO of Boss Semiconductor, emphasizes a vision to challenge established players in the chip industry.
biz.chosun.com, May. 06, 2025 –
Boss Semiconductor is one of the AI fabless companies targeting the artificial intelligence (AI) market, similar to the newly emerged companies like Furiosa AI, DeepX, and Mobilint. The difference is that while other fabless companies were founded by engineers in their 30s and 40s, Boss Semiconductor was established by veteran engineers with over 15 to 20 years of experience, including CEO Jea-Hong Park, who previously served as vice president of the System LSI and Foundry division at Samsung Electronics after working at IBM.
In particular, CEO Park has worked for 23 years in the semiconductor (DS) division of Samsung Electronics, where he contributed as an elite designer. He has previously developed mobile application processors (AP) for the initial iPhone and chips for Tesla's autonomous driving. He also has extensive collaboration experience with global companies like Audi. Recognizing Boss Semiconductor's potential, Hyundai Motor has made investments on two occasions.
The trust and partnership with Jim Keller, the renowned 'semiconductor legend' and CEO of TensTorent, also demonstrates Boss Semiconductor's strength. Park noted in a meeting with ChosunBiz at the company's office in Pangyo, Seongnam, on the 28th of last month that "there is a trust relationship built through various collaborations with CEO Keller, who led chip designs at Tesla and Intel," and explained, "Boss Semiconductor signed a cooperation agreement with TensTorent early on and decided to mount TensTorent's neural processing unit (NPU) on the vehicle AI accelerator.
Among the more than 200 research and development (R&D) personnel at Boss Semiconductor, many are veterans who have worked for years in Samsung semiconductors. Park stated, "While there are cases where a good idea is enough to start AI semiconductor design, understanding of the semiconductor industry is required in the process of realizing it," and added, "Boss Semiconductor is composed of personnel with long careers and practical experience gained at Samsung semiconductors.
This month, Boss Semiconductor, marking its third year since establishment, has already achieved significant results. The main product, the vehicle AI accelerator 'N1', has completed development and is expected to secure samples in Samsung's foundry 5-nanometer process within this year, aiming to begin mass production in the second half of next year. Recently, they signed a joint technology development contract with Intel, which is competing against Qualcomm in the automotive semiconductor market. The plan is to integrate Boss Semiconductor and Intel chips in the advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) of major global automotive companies. Below is a Q&A with CEO Park.