Key Foundry, an 8-inch pure-play foundry in Korea, announced today that it has changed its corporate name to SK keyfoundry. The new name was recently approved by the shareholder, which went into effect starting January 1, 2024. SK keyfoundry completed the submission of applications to register a trademark at the end of last year in Korea and certain foreign countries.
SK keyfoundry, an 8-inch foundry which had been spun off from Magnachip Semiconductor in September 2020, became a subsidiary of SK hynix in August 2022. Post the acquisition by SK hynix, the company has pushed ahead with a name change together with the post-merger integration (PMI) and finally decided SK keyfoundry as its new name considering the business continuity with the existing customers. SK keyfoundry expects to gain a momentum in expanding its business by taking this name change as an opportunity to improve its reputation both domestically and internationally.
Headquartered in Cheongju, SK keyfoundry has a fab with the capacity of producing approximately 100,000 wafers per month, conducting a foundry business to mostly produce mixed-signal & analog chips, including Display Driver IC (DDI), Micro Controller Unit (MCU) and 8-inch wafer-based power IC, which is suitable for small quantity production of diverse products. In particular, recently, there is a growing demand for 100V or higher BCD (Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS) in the power IC market to achieve high speed electric power delivery and high power efficiency. As a leading foundry in HV BCD process, SK keyfoundry has been actively striving to position itself in the global market of power ICs for automotive and industrial. In addition, for the continuity of supplying power ICs, SK keyfoundry has also started developing the process development of Gallium Nitride (GaN), which is considered to be the next-generation power semiconductor device and is also actively reviewing the development of Silicon Carbide (SiC).
In the meantime, SK keyfoundry has designated 2024 as a year to begin the “deep change” to accomplish innovative growth and change and in connection with it, it recently carried out the reorganization of internal organizational structure. The ultimate goals are to secure new customers by improving our sales networks in the U.S and China and to accomplish high customer satisfaction by providing differentiated foundry process development and improving the quality of our products.
“Name change will instill a sense of belonging as a member of SK Group and serve as a driving force to evolve our company into a strong and agile one,” said Derek D. Lee, CEO of SK keyfoundry. “SK keyfoundry will work hard to gain more ground in the 8-inch foundry market by actively engaging in the market of power ICs for automotive.”
