Point2 Technology, a South Korean deep-tech startup born out of a KAIST research lab, has completed an extension of its Series B funding round led by Korean venture capital firm LB Investment, with UK chipmaker Arm joining as a new strategic investor. The latest close brings Point2’s total Series B funding to $136 million
LB Investment led this extension, with continued support from existing investor Maverick Silicon, a U.S. semiconductor-focused investment firm. The round adds Arm to a roster of backers that already includes Nvidia’s venture arm NVentures, Taiwanese foundry giant UMC’s venture unit UMC Capital, Bosch Ventures, and U.S. interconnect company Molex — giving Point2 a rare lineup of strategic investors spanning the world’s leading chip and semiconductor-equipment makers. Point2 did not disclose the valuation underlying this round, though venture industry observers expect the company could reach unicorn status (a valuation above KRW 1 trillion) in its next funding round.
This deal follows Point2’s Series B extension in April, when it became the first Korea-based startup or semiconductor company to receive investment directly from Nvidia, in a round that brought Series B funding to $76 million at the time.
Founded in 2016 by Bae Hyeon-min, an electrical and electronic engineering professor and head of KAIST’s Startup Institute, together with his graduate students including co-founder and CEO Sean Park (Park Jin-ho), Point2 Technology is a Korean company that develops ultra-low-power, ultra-low-latency RF and mixed-signal interconnect chips addressing one of the biggest bottlenecks in AI data-center infrastructure: chip-to-chip and rack-scale data connectivity. The company’s core technology, e-Tube, is a patented RF signaling architecture that transmits data over plastic waveguides, creating a new category of connectivity called Active RF Cables (ARCs). According to the company, e-Tube delivers 10 times the reach, five times lower weight, and half the cable volume compared to copper at a comparable cost, while offering three times lower power consumption, three times lower cost, and 1,000 times lower latency than optical connections — without the reliability issues associated with failing lasers in optical systems.
The platform is designed to scale across form factors including pluggable cables, near-packaged e-Tube (NPE), and co-packaged e-Tube (CPE) modules for accelerator-to-accelerator compute fabric and rack-scale interconnects.
Point2 said it will use the new capital to expand its engineering, systems, operations, and business teams to accelerate commercialization of its Active RF Cable, near-packaged e-Tube, and co-packaged e-Tube solutions for next-generation rack-scale compute systems.
