Chinese semiconductor memory firm DERA has secured nearly 1 billion yuan ($157 million) in a Series C round of financing, the firm announced on Thursday.
The Series C round was led by state investor China Reform Fund and CICC Capital, a private equity (PE) fund management platform of investment bank China International Capital Corp (CICC).
The new round, which was also backed by investors including China Unicom CICC, CITIC New Future Investment, Shenzhen Capital Group, and existing shareholders, came after the completion of its Series B+ round in July. DERA had closed “hundreds of millions of yuan” in the Series B+ round led by HUA Capital, which focuses on information & communications technology (ICT) investments in China.
Founded in 2015, DERA designs and develops enterprise-level solid-state drives (SSD), which are storage devices that use integrated circuit assemblies to store data, for data centres and cloud computing platforms. Its businesses range from the development of storage chips and SSD controllers to the subsequent production, testing, module manufacturing, packaging, marketing, and after-sales services.
The Beijing-based company’s clients are mainly domestic Internet companies – such as the cloud computing arms of China’s Big Tech giants Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu – as well as telecom operators, financial services firms, and energy suppliers. It has R&D centres and customer technical support offices in Shanghai, Wuhan, Nanjing, and Shenzhen.
“Memory chips represent one of the most important battlefields in the integrated circuit industry. It is also a key bottleneck for [semiconductor development in] China. The SSD segment, in particular, has showcased high value, high entry barrier, and high growth potential,” said Tong Xuanzi, who leads CICC Chuanhe Fund, a vehicle that CICC Capital used to make the transaction.