# Byung-Gon Chun

> Byung-Gon Chun is the CEO and Co-founder of FriendliAI, and a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Seoul National University currently on leave. A systems researcher turned founder, he is best known for inventing continuous batching - the scheduling technique that became the default standard in every major LLM inference engine, from vLLM to TensorRT-LLM. His lab published the foundational ORCA paper at OSDI 2022, and he then turned that academic insight into FriendliAI, an enterprise AI inference platform that raised $26.7M and supports over 550,000 models from Hugging Face. With a career spanning Intel, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Facebook, Chun brings rare depth across both research and production AI infrastructure.

- **Role:** CEO and Co-Founder at FriendliAI
- **Organizations:** FriendliAI, Seoul National University
- **From:** South Korea
- **Nationality:** South Korean
- **Education:** B.S. in Electronic Engineering, Seoul National University, M.S. in Electronic Engineering, Seoul National University, M.S. in Computer Science, Stanford University, Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of California, Berkeley
- **Known for:** Invented Continuous Batching via the ORCA paper (OSDI 2022) - now the industry-standard technique in every major LLM inference engine including vLLM and TensorRT-LLM, EuroSys 2021 Test of Time Award, 2020 ACM SIGOPS Hall of Fame Award

## Career timeline

- **2007-2008** — Postdoctoral Researcher, International Computer Science Institute (ICSI), Berkeley
- **2008-2011** — Research Scientist, Intel Research Berkeley - worked on CloneCloud and TaintDroid projects
- **2011-2012** — Research Scientist, Yahoo! Research Silicon Valley - led Mobius and workload-driven big data systems
- **2012-2013** — Principal Scientist, Microsoft Silicon Valley
- **2013** — Joined Seoul National University as Associate Professor in CSE; Associate Director of SNU AI Institute
- **2014** — Received Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship - first Asian/Asia-based researcher to receive it
- **2016-2017** — Visiting Research Scientist, Facebook, Menlo Park
- **2020** — Visiting Researcher, Naver
- **2021** — Founded FriendliAI (formerly PeriFlow) out of SNU lab; raised $6M seed led by Capstone Partners
- **2022** — Published ORCA paper at OSDI 2022 introducing continuous batching for LLM inference
- **2023** — FriendliAI relocated headquarters to Redwood City, California; PeriFlow rebranded to FriendliAI
- **2025** — FriendliAI raised $20M seed extension led by Capstone Partners; revenue projected 6-7x growth vs 2024

## Achievements

- Invented Continuous Batching via the ORCA paper (OSDI 2022) - now the industry-standard technique in every major LLM inference engine including vLLM and TensorRT-LLM
- EuroSys 2021 Test of Time Award
- 2020 ACM SIGOPS Hall of Fame Award
- 2020 Google Research Award
- 2018 Amazon Machine Learning Research Award
- 2017 Facebook Caffe2 Research Award
- 2014 Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship - first Asian/Asia-based researcher to receive this award
- Co-developed REEF (Retainable Evaluator Execution Framework) with Microsoft, selected as Apache Software Foundation Top Level Project
- Built FriendliAI to support 550,000+ Hugging Face models with SOC 2 Type II and HIPAA certification
- Led FriendliAI to 25-30 large enterprise clients including LG Electronics, Scatter Lab, and Upstage

## Latest updates

- **2025-08** — FriendliAI raised $20M seed extension led by Capstone Partners with Sierra Ventures, Alumni Ventures, KDB, and KB Securities
- **2025-05** — Sang Won Lee (former CEO of Qeexo, acquired by TDK InvenSense) joined FriendliAI
- **2025-01** — FriendliAI projected 6-7x revenue growth for 2025 vs 2024, now serving 25-30 large enterprise clients
- **2024-12** — FriendliAI reached support for 550,000+ text, vision, audio, and multimodal models from Hugging Face
- **2023-12** — FriendliAI relocated headquarters to Redwood City, California, expanding US market presence

## Links

- Website: https://bgchun.github.io
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/byung-gon-chun

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/byung-gon-chun
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Last updated: 2026-05-14