China’s state-backed Shanghai Zhaoxin Semiconductor has secured “billions of Chinese yuan” in a Series A+ round of financing to advance the development of its central processing unit (CPUs), mainly used in desktop computers and servers.
Shanghai-headquartered Zhaoxin raised the fresh capital from lead investors Sun Rock Capital and Shanghai State-Owned Assets Management — two state capital investment companies in eastern China’s Shanghai City — Sun Rock Capital announced in a recent statement.
Other domestic investors, including China Insurance Investment Fund; Real Power Capital; and Jiangsu Eazytec, a publicly-listed provider of cloud computing solutions to enable smart cities, participated in the deal alongside Zhaoxin’s existing shareholders, according to the statement.
The total transaction amounted to “billions of Chinese yuan”, indicating an investment size of over 1 billion yuan ($144.5 million).
“China is strengthening its support of CPU R&D and application. With continuous advancements in China’s domestic IT innovations, indigenous CPUs will soon embrace a golden period for development,” said Sun Rock Capital in the statement.
Zhaoxin was founded in 2013 as a joint venture (JV) between the Shanghai Municipal Government and VIA Technologies, a Taiwanese manufacturer of motherboard chipsets. With affiliates across Chinese cities, including Beijing, Xi’an and Jinan, it primarily develops CPUs, graphics processing units (GPUs) and chipsets that can go into laptops, desk computers, all-in-one PCs, cloud-based terminals and storage servers for applications across the fields of IT, transportation, finance, education, healthcare and energy.
The new funding will help Zhaoxin further promote the R&D of its x86 CPUs, which refer to the microprocessor family with computing architectures initially developed by US chipmaker Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant.
Its CPU capabilities are built on VIA’s technologies, when the shareholding company in October 2020 agreed to transfer part of its x86 CPU intellectual property (IP) to Zhaoxin as it was shifting focus from PC products to various emerging applications of chipsets, including the smart city.