Global Technology said it will accept subscriptions from retail investors for two days starting Sept. 16.

Global Technology is scheduled to list on the KOSDAQ on Sept. 29. Following five trading days of bookbuilding with institutional investors starting Sept. 7, the company finalized its offering price at 10,000 won on Sept. 15.

"Our fundamental technological capabilities and earnings growth potential remain unchanged," Global Technology said. The company has low-power, constant-current time-division driving technology that reduces the number of driver integrated circuits (ICs) required while maintaining the same image quality. Cumulative IC sales have exceeded 200 million units.

Global Technology is a fabless semiconductor company. It develops and supplies both ICs and modules. The company also mass-produces module-level products, including display modules and backlight units (BLUs) for automotive customers. Revenue reached 28.8 billion won in the first half of this year, approaching its full-year revenue of 29.7 billion won last year. The company also swung to a profit of 1.155 billion won.

The company said it has also minimized the potential overhang. Shares available for trading immediately after Global Technology's listing will account for 22.19% of its total shares. The remaining 77.81% will be subject to lock-up periods ranging from one month to as long as four years. That compares with 37% for fabless company Haechitech, which listed last month.

"We minimized the number of shares available for trading on the listing date to protect investors," Global Technology CEO Kim Min-sun said. "After the listing, we will drive corporate value by delivering tangible results through diversification of next-generation mobility products."

Rebellions said on Sept. 16 it will supply racks to Japanese artificial intelligence (AI) company ai&’s data center. The company plans to expand the supply to more than 100 units.

Rebellions will deploy its heterogeneous infrastructure system “REBELRack” at ai&’s data center. An initial batch will be installed at ai&’s Tokyo data center, with additional units to follow. Rebellions declined to disclose the volume or contract value, citing a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) with the customer.

Heterogeneous infrastructure combines different computing devices, including neural processing units (NPUs), graphics processing units (GPUs) and central processing units (CPUs). Rebellions will provide ai&’s data center with a heterogeneous infrastructure solution focused on power efficiency and lower operating costs.

REBELRack is Rebellions’ fully integrated rack-scale AI infrastructure. It supports the open-source frameworks used by ai&, allowing the system to be deployed without a large-scale infrastructure transition. Rebellions expects the system to begin operating at ai&’s data center on the day of delivery.

The system supports up to 32 Rebellions accelerator cards and eight AMD EPYC 9355 CPUs. It has 6 terabytes of DDR5 system memory and delivers 64 petaflops (PFLOPS) of performance using 8-bit floating-point (FP8) operations.

Rebellions said a configuration of 100 REBELRack units would have maximum power consumption of 2.8 megawatts (MW) for the rack equipment alone. The company did not disclose when delivery of all 100 units would be completed. ai& plans to build out its data center to a capacity of 40 MW by the end of 2027.

SK hynix workers approved a revised 2026 wage and collective bargaining agreement in a union vote, three weeks after the first tentative agreement was rejected by a margin of 25 votes. The deal was reached after raising the cash portion of performance bonuses to 50%.

The revised agreement was approved with 8,731 votes, or 57.08%, in a two-day vote held by SK hynix's Icheon and Cheongju union from Sept. 15, according to results released Sept. 16. Of 16,039 eligible members, 15,297 voted, for a turnout of 95.37%.

The basic payout ratio for the company's profit-sharing (PS) bonus was adjusted to 50% cash and 50% stock. The first agreement called for 40% in cash and 60% in stock. The revised deal also gives employees the option to convert the cash portion into stock in increments of 10 percentage points.

Deferred portions of performance bonuses calculated based on last year's results that had been scheduled for payment next year and the following year will also be paid earlier. Single-parent households were added to the eligibility for additional housing loan support, which previously covered married households. The broader framework of the previous agreement, including a 6.3% wage increase and the deferral of a portion of wages in the event of losses, was maintained.

The first tentative agreement was rejected in an all-employee union vote on Aug. 25, with 7,535 votes, or 50.08%, against and 7,510 votes, or 49.92%, in favor. Labor and management then held about two weeks of additional negotiations and reached the revised agreement on Sept. 9.

SK hynix and the union will hold a signing ceremony for the final agreement before the Chuseok holiday, completing this year's wage and collective bargaining process.

"We thank the labor union and our employees for working with us through this difficult process," SK hynix said. "We will continue to work together as a company and employees to address and overcome the challenges we face."

Samsung Electronics plans to outsource all additional production of conventional memory modules as it focuses its in-house capacity on high-value memory products such as high-bandwidth memory (HBM).

Samsung Electronics is strongly urging outsourced semiconductor assembly and test (OSAT) partners to expand production lines to meet growing demand for conventional memory modules, according to industry sources on Sept. 15. Instead of expanding its own production capacity for DDR5 memory modules and solid-state drives (SSDs) used in PCs, servers and laptops, the company is increasing allocations to outsourcing partners.

“Samsung Electronics lacks space to expand existing back-end production lines needed to manufacture semiconductors for artificial intelligence (AI), so it is reallocating space and equipment at packaging plants in Cheonan and Onyang to advanced packaging lines, including HBM,” a person familiar with the matter said. “The company has decided to handle most increases in conventional memory module production through outsourcing rather than expanding its own capacity.”

Another person familiar with the matter said, “Samsung Electronics has asked its partners since June last year to increase investment in production lines for conventional DDR5 memory modules and SSDs. This year, it has even proposed that partners bring forward capacity expansions from their existing plans.”

Samsung Electronics is expanding outsourcing of conventional modules because it needs to use its limited production facilities more efficiently. The company plans to begin construction this month of a new 6 trillion won HBM plant at its Onyang campus, but completion will take several years.

A new $1.5 billion back-end processing plant under construction in an industrial park in Thai Nguyen Province in northern Vietnam will also be dedicated to testing older memory products, including DDR4, low-power LPDDR4, NAND flash and universal flash storage (UFS) products. That leaves Samsung Electronics with limited in-house facilities available to increase conventional module production.

DDR5 memory modules are assembled by mounting prepackaged DRAM and NAND chips and passive components onto printed circuit boards (PCBs) using surface-mount technology (SMT). The process is relatively less complex than advanced packaging for products such as HBM, allowing outsourcing partners to expand production capacity sufficiently.

Hanyang Digitech, SFA Semicon and Dreamtech Expand Facilities

Samsung Electronics’ outsourcing partners are also expanding production facilities in line with the company’s increased outsourcing of memory modules.

Dreamtech, which began mass production of DDR5 modules in India in November last year, is also expanding its production lines. In June, the company approved equipment investment to convert and expand its Noida Plant 1 in India, which had assembled printed board assemblies (PBAs) for smartphones, into a large-scale memory module production line. The expansion work will be completed this month, followed by a gradual increase in production capacity. The plant is ultimately expected to secure annual production capacity of more than 50 million units.

Hanyang Digitech is working to improve productivity at its existing memory module plant in Vietnam. The company invested more than 31.5 billion won in the first half of this year to introduce new machinery and automate production processes.

SFA Semicon is transferring DDR5 testing and module assembly equipment previously used at Samsung Electronics’ Onyang campus to SFA Semicon’s plant in the Philippines. The first phase is scheduled to begin operations in November, followed by the second phase in the second quarter of next year. The move is expected to significantly increase DDR5 final testing and module production capacity. SFA Semicon handles fine-pitch ball grid array (FBGA) packaging of memory chips at its Cheonan plant in South Chungcheong Province and conducts final testing and module assembly at its Philippine plant.

Global Technologies has set its final initial public offering price below its proposed range ahead of its KOSDAQ listing.

Global Technologies said Sept. 15 that it set the final offering price at 10,000 won per share. The company had proposed a price range of 13,000 won to 15,000 won. The final price was as much as 33.3% below the proposed range. The offering will raise a total of 40 billion won, with the company expected to have a market capitalization of about 196.5 billion won.

Global Technologies said it decided on the price after taking into account "the subdued IPO market and increasingly cautious investor sentiment," adding that it sought to build medium- to long-term trust with investors rather than focus on short-term demand for the offering.

The company conducted bookbuilding for institutional investors over five trading days from Sept. 7 to Sept. 11. A total of 961 domestic and overseas institutions participated, resulting in a subscription ratio of 123.19 to 1.

Global Technologies designs light-emitting diode (LED) driver integrated circuits (ICs). While it operates as a fabless chip company, it has a pilot line for microLED-related products in Pyeongtaek. The company supplies not only ICs but also products in module form, including backlight units (BLUs). Its main customers are in the TV and monitor markets. It has recently been expanding into the automotive LED market.

Global Technologies passed the KOSDAQ preliminary listing review in July. It is pursuing a technology-special listing. Public subscriptions will be held Sept. 16-17, with the listing scheduled for Sept. 29. Proceeds from the listing will be used from this year through 2028 for wafer costs, research and development (R&D), and a microLED development line.

The company is targeting revenue of 169.5 billion won in 2029. Revenue in the first half of this year was 28.8 billion won, equivalent to 97% of its full-year revenue of 29.7 billion won last year. It also swung to a profit of 1.155 billion won during the period.