Chinese green energy company Longneng has secured about 435.4 million yuan ($63.1 million) in its pre-IPO round. Separately, Eaglechip, a nascent integrated circuit (IC) developer, has completed its angel round at 286 million yuan ($41.5 million) from investors including Sequoia Capital China.
Green energy firm Longneng raises $63m in pre-IPO round
Chinese green energy company Zhejiang Longneng Electric Power Technology has secured about 435.4 million yuan ($63.1 million) in its pre-IPO funding round to elevate its core business of developing and operating solar power plants.
Longneng, an affiliate of Chinese publicly-listed electric machinery manufacturer Wolong Electric Group, raised the fresh capital from the parent as well as another 12 individual and institutional investors, including the country’s pork production company Muyuan Industrial Group and asset management firm FR Asset.
Wolong Electric Group invested almost 200 million yuan ($29 million) in the deal, boosting its stake in the affiliate to 41.98% from 40.17%, according to its recent filing with the Shanghai stock exchange. The filing shows that Longneng was valued at 950 million yuan ($137.7 million) before the transactions.
Longneng was founded in October 2013 to specialise in the development, construction, operation and management of photovoltaic (PV) power stations or solar power plants. Its core businesses also cover energy storage systems and integrated energy management services, with operations across seven provinces in China.
The investment is expected to “promote the sustainable and healthy operations and development of Longneng”, said the parent in the filing. “The funding will help the subsidiary step up its distributed PV projects targeting industrial and commercial clients, expand the operation scale, increase R&D investment in strategic new businesses such as energy storage and enhance strengths in the optical storage field,” it said.
The affiliate posted revenues of 30 million yuan ($4.3 million) and a net profit of 769,100 yuan (about $112,000) in the first quarter of 2022. Its audited financial results from 2021 show annual revenues of nearly 172.8 million yuan ($25.1 million) and a net profit of about 59 million yuan ($8.6 million).
Sequoia China backs IC developer Eaglechip in $41.5m angel round
Eaglechip, a nascent IC developer in China, announced on Wednesday the completion of its angel round at 286 million yuan ($41.5 million) from venture capital (VC) companies, including Sequoia Capital China.
Eaglechip, fully known as Suzhou Yige Technology, roped in some of China’s best-known VC companies, including Matrix Partners China, Redpoint China Ventures, CTC Capital and Vlight Capital for the angel round, only about seven months after its inception in January.
Headquartered in the Suzhou Artificial Intelligence Industrial Park in eastern China, the startup plans to use the net proceeds on product R&D with a focus on high-end field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and compatible electronic design automation (EDA) tools.
An FPGA is an IC designed to be configured by a customer or designer after manufacturing. Its specific applications range from digital signal processing, bioinformatics and medical imaging to computer hardware emulation, voice recognition, communication encoding and beyond.
Eaglechip is looking to join the fast-growing FPGA market currently dominated by overseas players, including San Jose-based Xilinx and Altera Corporation, which was acquired by US semiconductor giant Intel Corporation in 2015. Globally, the FPGA market size reached about $6.9 billion in 2021, with a 12.8% growth from the previous year. The market size is projected to hit $12.6 billion by 2025, according to statistics from AskCI Consulting, a market researcher in China.