Shanghai UniVista Industrial Software Group announced on Wednesday that it has raked in over 1.1 billion yuan ($164.3 million) in a series pre-A round as the startup looks to upgrade its industrial software and design solutions to better serve semiconductor companies.
The new round saw participation from investors including IDG Capital, CAS Investment Management, China Automotive Chips Alliance, and Feixiang Capital.
SAIC Capital and GAC Capital, the corporate venture capital (CVC) arms of state-owned automakers SAIC Motor and GAC Group respectively, also invested in the deal, alongside existing shareholders SummitView Capital and Mulan Investment.
The completion of the new round coincided with UniVista’s launch of several new electronic design automation (EDA) products and solutions that assist chip makers in the process of prototyping, debugging, testing, and functional verification.
Shanghai-based UniVista is led by chairman Jian-Yue Pan, who co-founded Chinese venture capital (VC) firm SummitView Capital. He was previously the president of Asia Pacific at Nasdaq-listed EDA company Synopsys.
The startup officially started operations in March 2021, as the founding team saw “explosive innovations and breakthroughs” in China’s integrated circuit (IC) market, especially in information and communication technology, according to information on its official website.
Capital inflows in the semiconductor industry are at an all-time high, driven by enthusiasm among investors ranging from government policymakers and traditional conglomerates to financial institutions and venture investors.
According to consulting firm Deloitte, investment in China’s semiconductor companies in 2020 was seven times that of the previous year. In the first half of 2021, venture investors in China and worldwide injected a combined 3.85 billion into the country’s semiconductor firms, which is equivalent to the global chip investment sum in the past 19 years.
UniVista’s initial round was closed in 2021 with over 1.7 billion yuan from investors such as Sequoia Capital China, Shenzhen Capital Group, and China IC Fund II, a 200-billion-yuan ($30 billion) national fund that focuses on China’s IC industry.