Panmesia Raises $12.5 Million in Seed Funding with a Valuation Exceeding $81.4 Million in the CXL Semiconductor Arena

September 18, 2023 -- Recently, Panmnesia, a fabless semiconductor company focused on CXL (Compute Express Link) technology, proudly announced its successful completion of a seed funding round amassing $12.5 million (16 Billion KRW). This significant financial feat led to the company’s post-money valuation soaring to an impressive $81.4 million (103.4 Billion KRW). In the context of South Korea’s semiconductor sector, achieving such a hefty valuation in the seed round stage is indeed exceptional. Leading the investment charge was Daekyo Investment, and the round witnessed contributions from a consortium of seven esteemed investment entities including SL Investment, Smilegate Investment, GNTech Venture Capital, Time Works Investment, Yuanta Investment, and Quantum Ventures Korea.

Behind Panmnesia's Evolution

Deeply rooted in academic excellence, Panmnesia was born out of the collaborative efforts of a talented group of Ph.D. graduates from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST). They were guided under the expert mentorship of Professor Myoungsoo Jung. With its foundation firmly set on groundbreaking research and innovation, Panmnesia is committed to offering a comprehensive suite of solutions encompassing CXL semiconductor IP, leading-edge data processing acceleration solutions, and holistic CXL-driven technologies.

CXL Interface: The Next Focus for Semiconductor Companies

CXL is rapidly gaining traction as a transformative interface technology designed to seamlessly connect diverse system devices, including memory expansion units, accelerators, processors, and switches. Its promise lies in the ease it offers in memory capacity augmentation and its prowess in streamlining data processing. One standout feature of CXL, memory pooling, stands as a beacon for data center efficiency, presenting avenues for substantial cost savings in memory-related operations. Given these advantages, tech giants such as Meta, Microsoft, and Google are demonstrating heightened interest in CXL-centric solutions. Aligning with this trend, global semiconductor powerhouses including Intel, AMD, Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynix have laid out their strategic blueprints to introduce CXL-compliant devices. Echoing this widespread enthusiasm, market projections hint at the CXL domain expanding to a robust $20 billion by the year 2030, placing Panmnesia in an enviable position to capitalize on these unfolding opportunities.

Panmnesia: Revolutionizing the CXL Landscape

In the fiercely competitive CXL market, where numerous global semiconductor companies are contending, Panmnesia stands alone as a domestic firm making unparalleled advancements. Panmnesia's efforts came into the limelight when they presented the world's first CXL 2.0-based full-system memory pooling framework at the USENIX ATC conference in Boston last year. Extending its technical lead, the company unveiled a solution this May that accelerates data center-oriented Artificial Intelligence (AI) applications, using CXL 3.0 technology.

In a more recent development, Panmnesia made another world's first at the Flash Memory Summit 2023 in Santa Clara, California. The company disclosed a full system, from devices to operating systems, connected through a multi-level switch architecture supporting CXL 3.0. As the only enterprise that has publicly demonstrated CXL 3.0 hardware and software technologies, Panmnesia has garnered attention from leading global IT firms such as AMD and Meta, affirming its front-runner status in CXL technologies worldwide.

Myoungsoo Jung, CEO of Panmnesia, elaborated, "CXL 3.0 takes a fundamentally different viewpoint from CXL 2.0 in its approach to various processors and memory semiconductor devices to support high scalability. Regrettably, most companies are still only discussing certain features of CXL 1.1 or 2.0." Jung added that Panmnesia has already completed the development of hardware and software to support CXL 3.0, which will be of significant assistance to a diverse range of companies utilizing CXL.

He continued, "The CXL ecosystem has yet to mature fully. Without a comprehensive support framework spanning hardware, software, and the full stack, it's difficult to harness the proper performance capabilities that CXL offers." Jung emphasized Panmnesia's distinct advantage: the company's CXL solution covers everything, including CXL IP, hardware, system solutions to enable these, and software essential for accelerating AI and data processing at the server and data center levels. These solutions are planned to be available to a broader customer base following the completion of state-of-the-art silicon tape-out later this month.

Looking forward, Panmnesia aims to continue leading the CXL industry. The company will further refine its CXL semiconductor technology and develop additional solutions to speed up AI applications and massive parallel data processing through CXL. "Although many companies have shown interest in CXL, products that effectively employ CXL technology are still hard to find," said Jung. "Panmnesia will not stop at technological development; we will play a pivotal role in expanding the CXL ecosystem."