Founder Of Chip-Testing Firm Rides AI Boom To Become South Korea’s Newest Billionaire

Founder Of Chip-Testing Firm Rides AI Boom To Become South Korea’s Newest Billionaire

Lee Chae-yoon, Leeno Industrial's founder and CEO.

Investor frenzy over artificial intelligence boosted shares of Leeno Industrial, an under-the-radar semiconductor company in South Korea, by more than 70% since November. The stock surge has made Lee Chae-yoon, the company’s founder and CEO, South Korea’s newest billionaire—and the second in the country, home to some of the biggest names in the chip industry that makes AI work, to be minted from the AI boom.

With a 35% stake, Lee, 73, is the largest shareholder of Leeno Industrial, which is listed on South Korea’s technology-rich Kosdaq stock exchange. Forbes estimates Lee’s net worth at $1 billion as of Thursday’s stock market close.

Based in the southern port city of Busan, Leeno makes parts for semiconductor-testing equipment that checks chips for defects. The company’s main products are IC Test Socket, which helps test chips to ensure they work, and Leeno Pin, a pin that helps check for defects in chips and printed circuit boards. Leeno says it has 1,020 customers globally, including Jay Y. Lee’s (no relation to Lee Chae-yoon) Samsung Electronics, Chey Tae-won’s SK Hynix and Jensen Huang’s Nvidia.

Like many companies in the notoriously cyclical semiconductor industry, Leeno reported a fall in revenue and earnings in 2023 amid weak demand for smartphones and personal computers. For the first nine months of 2023, the chip testing maker reported that revenue dropped 27% year-over-year to 197.6 billion won ($151 million), while net income fell 21.4% from the previous year to 83.5 billion won.

But investors believe the AI boom, powered by Nvidia’s graphics processing unit chips, will boost Leeno’s earnings. A similar scenario has played out at Hanmi Semiconductor, which saw its shares jump 600% in the past 12 months despite a drop in earnings and revenue in 2023. The stock surge, driven by investor optimism that its semiconductor-manufacturing equipment will be used to make chips for AI, made Kwak Dong Shin, the company’s CEO and largest shareholder, a billionaire last July.

“The emergence of new devices such as on-devices, and that the demand for R&D is increasing due to the fact that Meta, Google, Amazon, etc., are developing their own NPUs, will be a positive sign for the company’s future performance,” Jessica Kwag, a senior analyst at Hyundai Motor Securities who has a buy rating on Leeno, said in an emailed comment about the company’s stock-price rise. NPUs, or neural processing units, are chips designed for deep and machine learning applications.

“I also think the stock performed well because this very conservative company has a lot of room for improvement, given its plans to double the capacity,” Kwag added. In December 2022, Leeno announced it had acquired a 72,519-square-meter industrial facility in Busan for 75.5 billion won (about $60 million) to expand its production capacity.

In its third-quarter report, Leeno said demand for semiconductor-testing equipment is rising, driven by technological trends like AI, Internet of Things, AR, VR and autonomous driving.

Lee founded Leeno—the name is a combination of Lee’s and his wife’s surnames—in 1978, nine years after graduating from Kwangsung Engineering High School in Busan. The company listed on Korea’s technology-rich Kosdaq stock exchange in 2001. In 2018, Lee was appointed chairman of the regional innovation council in Busan, South Korea’s second-biggest city.

Lee is the latest Asian billionaire to make a fortune from the semiconductor sector. Other chip billionaires in the region include Morris Chang of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, the world’s largest maker of advanced chips, and Tsai Ming-kai of Taiwan chip designer MediaTek. In South Korea, Jay Y. Lee’s Samsung Electronics is the world’s largest memory-chip maker and the only other contract chip manufacturer besides TSMC capable of making today’s most advanced chips. South Korean Chey Tae-won’s SK Hynix is the world’s No. 2 memory-chip manufacturer. The Uchiyama family of Tokyo-based Lasertec, a semiconductor-testing equipment maker, feature among Japan’s 50 Richest.