Memory chipmaker SK Hynix made a “strategic investment” in Spanish RISC-V chip company Semidynamics to advance “memory-centric AI inference architecture.”

The size of the investment has not been disclosed, but in a statement, Semidynamics said the funding represents the “growing importance of tight architectural alignment between processors and advanced memory technologies.”

The partnership will see the two companies collaborate on the optimization of Semidynamics’ architecture with next-generation memory technologies to support the growing demands being placed on infrastructure by AI inference workloads.

The investment will also support future tape-outs and system-level development, including rack platform buildout. Semidynamics recently completed its first tape-out with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) using the chipmaker’s three-nanometer (3nm) process node technology.

RISC-V is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture based on open standards.

“SK Hynix’s investment is a direct reflection of where AI infrastructure is heading, systems where memory architecture is as strategically important as compute,” Semidynamics CEO Roger Espasa noted. “We built Semidynamics around that thesis, and this partnership strengthens our position as we bring our inference platform to market at a moment when the industry has recognized that token economics are a memory problem as much as a compute problem.”

“AI workloads are fundamentally memory-bound problems, and the industry has been underinvesting in architecture-level solutions,” Heejin Chung, SVP and head of venture investment at SK Hynix America, added. “Semidynamics is one of the few companies that has built from first principles around this constraint.”

Founded in 2016, Barcelona-based Semidynamics develops memory-focused AI infrastructure that incorporates its Gazzillion memory subsystem technology, designed to overcome an issue known as the “memory wall” – the gap between processor speed and memory bandwidth.

The company has secured $53 million in funding to date from European and Spanish innovation programs to support its ongoing build-out of a full-stack AI infrastructure platform.

SK Hynix earlier this year warned that the current memory chip shortage would continue into 2027. SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won during a press session at the recent GTC event extended that prediction, saying the shortage is now likely to persist until 2030, with the company expecting to see a wafer shortage of more than 20%.