[Featured Stock] Gaon Chips, the 'Leader' Driving the AI Semiconductor Era... Proving Unlimited Growth

Gaon Chips is showing strong performance. Securities firms' analysis suggests that it is reasonable for Gaon Chips to receive a high valuation as the leader among domestic design houses, given its sales portfolio focused on automotive and artificial intelligence (AI) semiconductors, which appears to be influencing the stock price.

As of 9:06 AM on the 22nd, Gaon Chips is trading at 55,900 KRW, up 15.85% from the previous day.

Hyundai Motor Securities analyzed that Gaon Chips holds a sales portfolio centered on automotive and AI semiconductors using advanced fine processes with significant growth potential.

Minjung Kwak, a researcher at Hyundai Motor Securities, stated, "It is reasonable for Gaon Chips to receive a high valuation as the leader among domestic design houses," and added, "From 2025, when mass production sales surpass development sales, a substantial performance quantum jump is expected."

Gaon Chips announced that it signed an ASIC design contract worth a total of 30.1 billion KRW the previous day. Researcher Kwak analyzed, "Regarding high-performance computing (HPC), the semiconductor to be applied will use Samsung Foundry's cutting-edge process," and said, "Through this order, Gaon Chips has once again proven that it holds the highest technological competitiveness among domestic design house companies."

He emphasized, "For fabless companies to outsource semiconductor production to Samsung Electronics Foundry, back-end design must be completed," and added, "Receiving projects from fabless companies is also highly significant at the design house level." Furthermore, he explained, "The design house's sales structure is divided into ‘DSP sales,’ which are directly ordered by the design house, and ‘service sales,’ which are design project orders received from Samsung Electronics," and judged, "Since DSP sales have high added value, the order announcement from the previous day also demonstrates Gaon Chips' strong competitiveness."

Researcher Kwak explained, "The A2X semiconductor developed by Telechips was also designed in the back-end by Gaon Chips as a design house," and added, "The automotive lineup is continuously expanding." He emphasized, "The ordered projects are expected to significantly contribute to the 2025 performance."

He introduced, "Neural Processing Units (NPU) are semiconductors specialized in parallel computation, similar to Graphics Processing Units (GPU)," and explained, "Unlike GPUs, which were originally developed for graphic processing, NPUs are designed to be suitable for AI learning and inference." He said, "Most recently released smartphones have NPUs implemented within the Application Processor (AP)," and added, "For data center servers, NPUs are being installed in the form of AI accelerators."

Researcher Kwak emphasized, "NPUs are installed in edge devices requiring AI functionality such as automobiles, robots, and CCTV," and said, "Big tech companies want to implement semiconductor chips specialized for their own use, so the importance of design houses can only increase."