A local Chinese automotive chip startup, SemiDrive, announced the closing of an RMB 1 billion ($140 million) Series B+ financing round, which follows the completion of an RMB 1 billion ($140 million) Series B financing round in July, as per CnEVPost.
Its latest round was led by a fund set up by SAIC and CITIC Securities. The funds will be used to update its automotive chip products and enhance its core technology, according to the company post on its WeChat account.
In addition, it will also be used to boost the use of SemiDrive’s products in vehicles and strengthen service capabilities, said the company.
In 2018, SemiDrive was founded to focus on developing highly reliable, and high-performance automotive chips. 80% of its staff are R&D staff, with R&D investments accounting for more than 50% of its total spending, according to the company.
SemiDrive’s products
At present, SemiDrive has four series of products, including high-performance MCU E3, intelligent driving chip V9, intelligent cockpit chip X9, and central gateway chip G9.
Currently, all four chips are in mass production and installed in vehicles, with a one million annual capacity.
Notably, it said that SemiDrive’s products already cover 90% of local car companies, with over 100 orders for mass production projects and more than 260 customers.
Series A & B investments
In the same month, the company completed an RMB 500 million ($69 million) Series A investment in May 2020 and released the G9, V9, and X9 automotive chips.
In July last year, SemiDrive released “UniDrive,” a fully open autonomous driving platform based on the V9 series chips.
Furthermore, SemiDrive completed RMB 1 billion ($140 million) in Series B financing and completed seven rounds of financing on July 26, 2021.
Higher arithmetic power V9S autonomous driving chip
The company plans to launch the higher arithmetic power V9S autonomous driving chip next year, developed for the central computing platform architecture, with 500-1000T of arithmetic power and is able to support L4/L5 robotaxi.
