Ningbo Xinlu, a portfolio company of Zhongji, has successfully completed a new round of financing of 300 million yuan.
On December 17, CHIPWAYS (Ningbo Xinlu/Shanghai Qipuwei), a portfolio company of China Zhongji Investment, announced the completion of a RMB 300 million Series A+ round of financing. This round was led by Wuyue Peak Capital, a renowned semiconductor industry fund, with the joint participation of well-known industry and sector funds such as Yuanhe Chongyuan, Linxin Investment, and Lianhe Capital. This round of financing will primarily be used for the serialization of automotive-grade sensing and control chips.
Established in 2014, CHIPWAYS is one of the earliest domestic companies focusing on the design of automotive-grade intelligent sensing and control chips. It is the only semiconductor chip design company in China that has contributed to the "Thirteenth Five-Year Plan" and the Fourteenth Five-Year Plan for Energy Saving and New Energy Technology Roadmap of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's Automotive Engineering Society. It is a founding council member of the China Automotive Chip Industry Innovation Strategic Alliance and a valued member of the Shanghai Pudong Automotive Electronics Innovation and Intelligent Industry Alliance and other associations. The core team mainly consists of core members from the original Spreadtrum team, senior experts in the international semiconductor and automotive industries, and several returned PhDs. The company possesses a series of key patent core technologies for intelligent automotive sensing and control chips. It has already mass-produced and sold automotive-grade Hall sensor chips XL3600 series, automotive-grade 32-bit microcontroller MCU chips XL6600 series, and new energy power multi-cell battery pack monitor BMS AFE chips XL8812/XL8820 series. Currently, the company has achieved a leading advantage in the automotive electronics body control field.Simultaneously with the completion of the financing, CHIPWAYS also released a one-stop automotive-grade chip solution for new energy battery management systems. As the only domestic automotive semiconductor manufacturer to achieve mass production of ASIL-B and ASIL-C levels, CHIPWAYS can provide customers with a "turnkey" solution for BMS, including: automotive-grade BMS AFE analog front-end sampling series chips, automotive-grade BMS digital isolation communication interface series chips, automotive-grade 32-bit microcontroller MCU series chips, as well as corresponding tools, algorithms, and software and hardware solutions and services.Dr. Qin Ling, founder and chairman of CHIPWAYS (Xinlu/Qipuwei), introduced: "From the outset of the company's founding, we did not enter the market from traditional industrial-grade and consumer-grade chips, but chose to build and develop a platform for extremely challenging automotive-grade chips. The road to domestic automotive semiconductors is as treacherous as the north slope of Mount Everest. Through close cooperation in the industrial chain, the team's strong patience, resilience, and tenacious spirit, we hope to pave the country's roads with domestically produced automotive chips. Ten years of successful entrepreneurship at Spreadtrum broadened our horizons, and the second entrepreneurship has given us considerable confidence in terms of team, technology, product positioning, and comprehensive resources, allowing the company to confidently compete with international automotive chip giants and empower the development of the domestic automotive industry. CHIPWAYS now has dozens of domestic and international customers, and is gradually expanding to achieve mass production in more vehicle models; it is also introducing international brand giants. This round of funding will accelerate the company's progress and pace."Tan Runzhan, Partner and Managing Director of China Zhongji Investment, stated that with the continuous advancement of communication and energy technologies, intelligent connected vehicles are rapidly becoming more prevalent. After years of policy incentives and efforts from various parties in the industry, China has seen the rapid rise of a group of vehicle manufacturers and parts suppliers with strong brand strength and R&D capabilities. Currently, the domestic semiconductor industry is developing rapidly. The core entrepreneurial team of CHIPWAYS, led by Dr. Qin Ling, chose years ago to make forward-looking layouts and technological cultivation in the field of automotive-grade chips, aiming high. Against the backdrop of the market's long-term monopoly by overseas chip giants, after years of persistence and hard work, CHIPWAYS now has dozens of domestic and international customers. Facing the current opportunity for domestic substitution amid the chip shortage, it will surely experience rapid development. We firmly believe that the company will seize the opportunity and achieve continuous success in products and business.
