South Korean Chip Firm EdgeAI and US-based EfficientAI Sign MOU to Co-develop 1000 TOPS Physical AI Chip

South Korean AI semiconductor company EdgeAI and US-based EfficientAI Corporation signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) on October 16, 2026, at Seoul National University. The agreement marks the start of joint development for next-generation 'physical AI' chips designed for robotics and autonomous control systems, with a stated goal of commercializing a 1000 TOPS (trillion operations per second) chipset by 2028.

According to the report, the proposed architecture utilizes Chiplets rather than a traditional monolithic System-on-Chip (SoC). The design aims to connect four computing chiplets, each delivering 250 TOPS at approximately 8W power consumption, to achieve a system-level performance of 1000 TOPS within a total power envelope of 15–30W. This configuration is intended to enable robots equipped with 7–8 billion parameter Vision-Language-Action (VLA) models to run real-time inference locally without external server dependency.

The partnership outlines specific roles and commercial rights: EfficientAI will contribute its Spatial Dataflow technology for energy efficiency optimization, while EdgeAI will oversee implementation and secure exclusive sales rights across Asia (including Korea, Japan, China, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia). EfficientAI retains rights outside Asia. Both parties plan to finalize a definitive joint development contract by the end of December 2026. It is important to note that this remains an early-stage cooperation agreement; no production capacity or delivered hardware currently exists.