Iluvatar Corex, a Chinese developer of graphics processing units (GPUs) for general-purpose computing, has raked in over 1 billion yuan ($148.4 million) in two tranches as part of its extended Series C funding round.
The firm will use the capital to invest to develop artificial intelligence (AI) chips.
The Shanghai-based startup secured part of the new funding through a Series C+ round led by Beijing Financial Street (BFS) Capital, a state capital investor in Beijing. It raised the remaining sum from a Series C++ round jointly led by China-focused private equity company HOPU Investments and HOPU-ARM Innovation Fund, its joint fund with SoftBank Group Corp’s chip technology firm Arm.
A slew of Chinese investors participated in the two rounds, including ZGC Science City Technology Growth Fund, Shanghai Guosheng Group, Vista Investment, Ding Xiang Capital, Greater Bay Investment Group, and Shanghai Free Trade Zone Equity Fund Management.
The new investment will help Iluvatar Corex speed up its product development and secure its position in China’s increasingly competitive GPU market. The startup’s domestic rivals include Alibaba-backed Vastai Technologies, Qiming-backed Biren Technology, and Shanghai-listed Cambricon Technologies.
Their products are a vital component of computing devices from laptops and AR/VR products to autonomous driving vehicles and crypto mining machines.
Iluvatar Corex, which officially started designing products in 2018, officially released what it claims to be China’s first 7-nanometer cloud training GPU called “Tiangai 100.” The product has generated nearly 200 million yuan ($29.7 million) from sales orders with applications in over 200 use cases as of the end of March 2022. The startup is working on its second product, a 7nm cloud reasoning chip named “Zhikai 100.”
“The demand for greater computing power will grow further driven by the evolvement of technologies including 5G, AI, cloud computing, big data, and IoT (Internet of Things),” said Fang Fenglei, founder and chairman of HOPU Investments, in a statement.
“GPU is a critical element in the promotion of computing power,” said Lin Sihan, who leads HOPU-ARM Innovation Fund. “With strong technology know-how and successful commercialisation experience in the area, Iluvatar Corex is expected to empower the industry development across different sectors by offering its computing solutions.”
The fresh capital came over one year after the startup raised 1.2 billion yuan ($178.1 million) in the first tranche of the Series C round. Global investment firm Cedarlake Capital and Chinese PE major Centurium Capital co-led the previous deal, with participation from Fortune Investment and China Unicom Capital.