4by4 is gaining momentum. It appears that the news of TSMC, the global foundry leader, considering a strategic investment in the domestic AI semiconductor design startup PuriosaAI is influencing the stock price. Amid reports that Meta, the parent company of Facebook, is pursuing an acquisition, the news of TSMC's investment consideration has attracted attention in the AI industry. If Meta acquires PuriosaAI and TSMC also invests, it is expected to be an attempt to diversify the NVIDIA monopoly in the AI semiconductor market.
4by4's AI image enhancement program PIXELL not only improves video quality to high definition but also allows flexible adjustment of resolution and data transmission volume (bitrate) optimized for various mobile devices, preventing traffic overload caused by an increase in simultaneous users. As AI-based video content production becomes more active, demand for PIXELL is expected to grow.
At 9:35 a.m. on the 28th, 4by4 was trading at 8,340 KRW, up 15.19% from the previous day.
According to the IT industry and foreign media, TSMC’s investment subsidiary TSMC Global and PuriosaAI are reportedly discussing specific investment scale and conditions. TSMC Global is said to have been exploring strategic investment in PuriosaAI since the second half of last year. PuriosaAI stated that the investment scale and specific conditions have not been finalized.
TSMC’s consideration of a strategic investment appears to be a recognition of PuriosaAI’s technological capabilities through chip production using TSMC’s manufacturing process. Expectations are growing that if PuriosaAI and TSMC go beyond a manufacturing process partnership, the synergy effect will be significant.
Following Meta, TSMC’s interest in PuriosaAI indicates the startup’s high strategic value. Meta has set a goal to invest up to $65 billion (approximately 93 trillion KRW) in AI infrastructure this year and deploy 1.3 million graphics processing units (GPUs). Through acquiring PuriosaAI, Meta seems to aim to reduce chip purchasing and data center operating costs and secure AI semiconductor design talent.
Content AI solution company 4by4 is nurturing 'PIXELL' as a new growth engine. PIXELL is an AI image enhancement program developed by 4by4. It automates image quality improvement using AI rather than relying on large-scale manpower.
4by4 is targeting the U.S. content market in cooperation with PuriosaAI. They are developing a package product that integrates PIXELL software on PuriosaAI’s NPU (neural processing unit) semiconductor board to target overseas markets. This approach supplies customized products in the form of hardware server units for overseas production studios that avoid cloud-based image enhancement solutions. Through this, content producers can implement low-power, high-efficiency AI image enhancement functions by utilizing PuriosaAI’s high-speed computing NPU.
Content clients can experience high-speed computation, inference learning, and low power consumption through PuriosaAI’s NPU while enjoying 4by4’s image enhancement work. 4by4 plans to focus its efforts on marketing PIXELL products equipped with PuriosaAI’s NPU. 4by4 stated that through cooperation with PuriosaAI, they can now offer image enhancement AI solutions, which were previously available only in cloud (online) environments such as SaaS or API, directly embedded in system semiconductor chips as hardware packages.
PIXELL has obtained Amazon Web Services (AWS) ‘Partner Software Path’ certification. 4by4 has been recognized for both its solution management capabilities of its proprietary AI image enhancement solution PIXELL and its technical ability to provide stable and secure services in cloud environments through this partner path certification.
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