CoreDrive Semiconductor Completes Pre-A Round of Financing of Hundreds of Millions of RMB

Recently, SemiDrive Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd. (SemiDrive Technology) completed a Pre-A round of financing worth hundreds of millions of RMB. This round of financing was led by Matrix Partners China, and other investment institutions included Vertex Capital, Lenovo Capital, Nanjing Jiangbei Intelligent Manufacturing Industry Fund, and Nanjing Lanpu. Before this round of financing, SemiDrive Technology had received investments from Walden International, Sequoia Capital China Fund, Lenovo Capital, and Hechuang Capital.

CoreChi Semiconductor Technology Co., Ltd., which provides high-reliability and high-performance chip products for the automotive field, is a high-tech semiconductor company headquartered in Nanjing Jiangbei New District, with wholly-owned subsidiaries or offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen. This round of financing is mainly used to help achieve the current mass production of automotive smart cockpit, ADAS and domain control processor chip products and the iteration of new products.

Xinchi's products are entirely based on independent research and development, focusing on high-reliability, high-performance automotive-grade processor chip products to meet the application fields of the automotive industry with strict requirements on functional safety and usage environment. It is committed to providing semiconductor products and system-level turnkey solutions such as smart car core chips and high-performance industrial microprocessors.

The core members of Xinchi Technology are all from the automotive semiconductor industry. The overall R&D team has an average industry experience of more than 12 years and has rich experience in automotive-grade chip design, development and marketing. They have led the development of automotive-grade processors with the world's leading market share, which have been widely used in domestic and foreign automakers.

Both of Xinchi’s co-founders, Zhang Qiang and Qiu Yujing, have more than 20 years of industry experience.

Mr. Zhang Qiang, Chairman of SemiDrive, said, "China's automobile production and sales currently account for 30% of the world's total, but China's automotive chips, especially automotive-grade processors, are almost blank and need to rely on imports. In 2018 alone, the market size of China's automotive chips reached RMB 60 billion. In the future, as the automotive industry rapidly transforms toward electronic and intelligent development, this market will continue to expand. SemiDrive Technology has seen the opportunity and hopes to leverage its own technological and market advantages to fill this gap." 

Ms. Qiu Yujing, General Manager of CoreDrive, who has more than 20 years of R&D experience in China and Silicon Valley, said: "Automotive-grade smart chips are a very difficult field to design and develop. Not only must we consider the requirements for high performance and low power consumption of processors, but we must also meet functional safety, information security and high reliability. We must also have a certain degree of foresight to meet the needs of future automotive electronics and intelligence. This is precisely the advantage of our team. In the past more than 10 years of supporting automotive customers, we have fully understood the difficulties, pain points and needs of customers and truly designed automotive-grade chips tailored for automobiles."

Mr. Wang Huadong, Partner of Matrix Partners China, said, "Driven by the connectivity and intelligence of the automotive industry, the demand for chip performance is getting higher and higher. The core team of SemiDrive has been engaged in automotive-grade control chips for more than 20 years and has a deep accumulation and unique innovation in product technology. At the same time, SemiDrive has been deeply involved in the Chinese market, has a deep understanding of customer needs and attaches great importance to local technical support. It has the opportunity to be on par with industry giants and become an important player in the industry." 

Mr. Zhu Jia, partner of Xiangfeng Investment, said, "Today, China's automotive semiconductors are almost monopolized by overseas manufacturers, just as China's mobile phone semiconductors were highly dependent on imports when we invested in Spreadtrum. We firmly believe that the SemiDrive team, with its many years of industry experience, will add strength to the development of China's automotive semiconductor industry in the future." 

Mr. Song Chunyu, Vice President of Lenovo Group and Partner of Lenovo Capital and Incubator, said, "Automotive intelligence has brought unprecedented development opportunities to China's automotive industry. Automotive-grade processors will be the heart of future smart cars. The SemiDrive team is a world-class expert in automotive-grade processors. After investing in SemiDrive in the angel round, Lenovo Capital and Incubator continued to make additional investments in this round and are very willing to support the rapid development of the SemiDrive team in this field."