Chip shortage issues and the rapid growth of China's new energy vehicle market have led chip companies to gain traction with investors.
Chinese automotive chip supplier SemiDrive announced that it has closed nearly RMB 1 billion ($154 million) in Series B funding to support its chip development using more advanced processes.
The investment round was co-led by Guokai Equipment Manufacturing Industrial Investment Fund and V Fund, with BOC International, Shanghai Sci-Tech Innovation Center Capital, and Shanghai Zhangjiang Haoheng Innovation Equity Investment Management Co.
SemiDrive was founded in 2018 and its main business includes developing high-performance automotive-grade chips covering smart cockpits, central gateways, autonomous driving, and highly reliable MCUs. It closed an RMB 500 million Series A investment in May 2020.
In May 2020, SemiDrive released X9, V9, and G9 automotive chips, and launched a comprehensive solution for smart mobility with 71 partners.
In April this year, SemiDrive launched an upgraded version of its entire product line. Recently, it released "UniDrive", a fully open self-driving platform based on V9 series chips.
According to the company's plan, in 2022, it plans to release "V9P/U", an autonomous driving chip with 10-200T of computing power, to support L3 level autonomous driving.
In 2023, it will launch a higher-capacity V9S self-driving chip, which is developed for the central computing platform architecture, with 500-1000T of computing power, and can support L4/L5 Robotaxi.
In addition to chip development, SemiDrive has also built a self-driving R&D team.
Local Chinese firms can meet less than 5% of auto chip demand
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