South Korean chip designer SEMIFIVE has signed a contract worth about $52 million (70.3 billion won) with a US-based AI company to develop a next-generation AI inference accelerator.

The deal is SEMIFIVE’s largest single contract to date. It represents more than 40 percent of the company’s total 2025 orders and about 60 percent of the new orders it secured in the first half of 2026, the company said.

It is also SEMIFIVE’s first “Spec Hand-off” engagement in North America. Under this model, the customer provides only key performance requirements and specifications, while SEMIFIVE takes responsibility for the full development process — detailed design, software, packaging, testing and mass production.

The chip is aimed at data centers and will integrate LPDDR6 memory, PCIe Gen5 connectivity and Big Die technologies. Tape-out, the final design handoff for manufacturing, is targeted for the first half of 2027, with global mass production beginning in 2028.

SEMIFIVE said the win strengthens its presence in North America and its standing in the custom AI chip market, where major tech firms increasingly design their own silicon.