Chinese chip design unicorn JLSemi has secured nearly $100 million in a Series C funding round to strengthen the development of communication chips powering smart connected vehicles, the company said in a statement.
The Series C round was jointly led by alternative investment management company CITIC Capital’s semiconductor investment arm and SummitView Capital, an equity investment firm with operations in China and the US.
Inno-Chip, a venture capital (VC) fund backed by Shanghai-listed semiconductor device maker Will Semiconductor, doubled down on the deal. Other industry investment companies, including a joint fund between China’s GP Capital and integrated circuit (IC) packaging service Xinchao Group, also participated.
JLSemi develops high-speed Ethernet communication chips, which are integrated circuits (ICs) that control Ethernet communications – a traditional yet widely used technology for connecting devices such as computers in a wired local network or wide area network. It specialises in gigabit Ethernet analog and system on a chip (SOC) semiconductors used in fast-speed, high-performance communication across the automobile and industrial Internet of Things (IoT) sectors.
The startup claims to have delivered “tens of millions of chips” for usage in data transmission, data exchange and network management. It has R&D and operation centres in Singapore and Chinese cities, including Shanghai, Nanjing, Suzhou and Shenzhen.
To step up its business layout in the auto chip area, JLSemi teamed up with Will Semiconductor in August 2021 to build a joint venture (JV) to focus on the development of end-to-end, fast-speed data transmission, processing, and network communication chips and solutions for the next generation of intelligent vehicles.
The JV is expected to launch eight new chipset products capable of transferring data at the rates of two, four and six gigabits per second by the end of this year. These chipsets are said to be able to meet most data transmission demands for intelligent connected vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems.
Prior to the Series C round, JLSemi completed its Series B round at “hundreds of millions of Chinese yuan” in August 2021, the startup announced at the time. The Series B round was raised in three tranches: Beijing-based CDH Investments led the first tranche in late 2020 while the second and third tranches were led by Inno-Chip in early 2021 and CITIC Capital in mid-2021, respectively.