This startup is working on a chip to save traders precious microseconds using AI

In the unfathomably fast realm of high-frequency trading, a South Korean startup’s plan to build a microchip that speeds markets up by a few microseconds is bound to get some attention.

The company, Rebellions Inc., was set up six months ago in Seoul by Park Sunghyun, who used to work as a quant developer at Morgan Stanley in New York, with two partners. The chip they’re developing aims to run artificial intelligence more efficiently, which could cut precious millionths of a second off the reaction times of automatic-trading machines.

That’s a bold claim in the absence of a completed prototype, but fitting for a company named Rebellions because Park wants to disrupt the industry like the French Revolution upended the European country more than two centuries ago.