OpenEdge Submits Securities Registration Statement... KOSDAQ Listing in Full Swing

Total Public Offering Shares: 3,636,641
Offering Price Range: 15,000 KRW to 18,000 KRW

[Asia Economy Reporter Kwangho Lee] OpenEdge Technology (hereinafter OpenEdge, CEO Seonghyun Lee), a company specializing in semiconductor intellectual property (IP) platforms, is challenging for a KOSDAQ listing.

On the 17th, OpenEdge submitted a securities registration statement to the Financial Services Commission and officially began the listing process. The total number of shares to be offered by OpenEdge is 3,636,641 shares. The desired price range per share is 15,000 KRW to 18,000 KRW, with a total expected offering amount of 54.5 billion KRW to 65.5 billion KRW. The offering price will be finalized through institutional demand forecasting from September 7 to 8, followed by a two-day general subscription on the 15th and 16th of the same month. Samsung Securities is the lead underwriter for the listing.

OpenEdge aims to leverage this KOSDAQ listing as an opportunity to advance its artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductor IP technology and become a leading company in the semiconductor industry.

Founded in 2017, OpenEdge is a system semiconductor IP specialist company that owns the world's only integrated AI semiconductor design IP platform. The semiconductor IP business does not manufacture semiconductor chips directly but produces IP, which can be considered the core design blueprint of semiconductors, and supplies it to fabless companies. The revenue model includes license fees and running royalties based on the mass production of semiconductor chips applying the IP. A company with a similar business model is the UK-based ARM.

OpenEdge has secured over 30 license contracts, including with global top-tier fabless companies, and has shown a steep average annual sales growth rate of 107% from 2018 to 2021 based on numerous customers. Notably, in the first half of this year, it recorded sales of 7 billion KRW, surpassing last year's annual sales.

The company explained that OpenEdge's rapid growth in the AI semiconductor IP market since its establishment is largely due to its AI integrated IP platform that combines memory system IP, which is essential for neural processing units (NPU) and system-on-chip (SoC). Instead of producing the neural processing units, which enable numerous simultaneous calculations, and the memory systems supporting computational tasks separately, OpenEdge developed an integrated IP platform that tightly couples each design asset product to maximize efficiency.

Based on this technological capability, OpenEdge received an AA rating in the preliminary technology evaluation by NICE D&B in January, the first in the semiconductor industry. The funds raised through the listing will be used to strengthen the product portfolio, including high-performance NPU and memory system IP design assets supporting cutting-edge semiconductor processes below 7nm.

Seonghyun Lee, CEO of OpenEdge, said, “In addition to our headquarters in Korea, we have subsidiaries in the United States and Canada, and we are striving to secure competitiveness targeting the global semiconductor market. We will actively respond to the rapidly increasing demand for high-performance AI semiconductor design and, in the future, expand our business by applying our IP solutions to various fields such as AI servers, the Internet of Things, and 5G wireless communication, broadening the intersection where people and technology meet.”