Master of his craft. Meet Jaehong Park, the CEO of BOS Semiconductors, who has devoted himself to mastering the area of "System Semiconductors" for decades. With experience and technical know-how accumulated through the years from his tenure at companies such as Motorola, IBM, and Samsung Electronics, Park started this new company along with his colleagues who also possess expertise in the semiconductor domain. 

Founded last year, BOS Semiconductors is a fabless company that is developing automotive system-on-chip(SoC). It was puzzling. As a former Executive Vice President of Samsung Electronics, Park could have moved on to the next phase of his career to act as an advisor for large corporations or become a country manager of a foreign company. Despite these options, he dived straight into the fiercely competitive startup ecosystem.

Park stated, "The domestic fabless (semiconductor design specialist) industry has not developed like its overseas counterparts." He explained, "The environment in Korea is ripe for fabless companies. It has many foundry companies and system companies that can become potential customers of fabless upstarts." He added, "I established the company with the goal of contributing to the development of the domestic fabless industry," emphasizing the need to establish a foundation for companies like Taiwan's MediaTek or U.S. companies like Qualcomm and NVIDIA to emerge in Korea.

According to global market research firm IC Insights, the global fabless market share (as of 2021) was the highest in the United States at 68%, followed by Taiwan (21%), and China (9%). Korea's market share was only 1%. The only fabless company in Korea with an annual revenue exceeding 1 trillion Korean Won is LX Semicon. Realizing the seriousness of the current situation, the Korean government and the domestic semiconductor industry recently pledged to cultivate more than ten fabless companies with annual revenues exceeding 1 trillion Korean Won.

The semiconductor design field requires a high level of technical expertise and know-how, which serves as a high barrier of entry. Nevertheless, Park founded BOS Semiconductors because he had confidence. He said, "I've been in the system semiconductor field for 30 years," and added, "I thought I could contribute to the development of the domestic fabless industry by actively utilizing this experience, so I started the business with some of my friends and colleagues."

BOS Semiconductors is a startup, but its key personnel have impressive backgrounds. In addition to CEO Park, there is Kyung-mook Lim as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO), who has experience in leading semiconductor design companies, as well as team leaders in that have rich experience in their respective fields.

The impressive backgrounds of the company's early members including Kyung-mook Lim as CTO and team leaders that have rich experience in their respective fields, including System-on-Chip (SOC) design, software development, architecture and safety, played a crucial role in attracting investments exceeding 10 billion Korean Won within just a year of establishment. Of course, recent fundraising does not guarantee the company's future. The startup ecosystem is highly competitive but CEO Park remains confident. He said, "We are developing autonomous driving semiconductors," and added, "We call it a smartphone or PC on wheels. Semiconductors are becoming increasingly central." He also stated, "In the future, cars will have a structure with a powerful CPU in the center, and we will develop the central super SoC to power future mobility." A super SoC integrates athe various complex functions within a car into a single SoC through software.

As of September 2023, BOS Semiconductor has 73 employees dedicated to research and development (R&D). There are 56 employees at the Pangyo headquarters and 17 at the overseas research center in Vietnam. CEO Park said, "About 70 to 100 people are needed to develop a single semiconductor SoC," and added, "Our goal this year is to increase the total development workforce to 100, both domestically and internationally."

Successful fundraising and continuous hiring of talent are ongoing. Now, what remains is to demonstrate results. The first goal is to successfully complete the current project, with the first samples of automotive semiconductors expected to be available by the end of next year. However, the company's ambitions go beyond this. The big picture has already been drawn. CEO Park explained, "After we achieve our short-term goals, we want to establish and develop a sustainable infrastructure for designing and developing semiconductors. Our long-term goal is to become a comprehensive automotive semiconductor company."

He added, "Our role models are MediaTek and Qualcomm," saying, "It took these companies about 30 years from their founding to reach their current positions. Catching up with them in 5 to 10 years is realistically difficult, but I hope that we can reach a similar position as them in 20 years."