More than half are domestic companies! In February, 95 global electronics companies received a total of US$3 billion in investment

Rain Neuromorphics has raised $25 million in a Series A round led by Prosperity 7 Ventures, with participation from existing investors Buckley Ventures, Gaingels, Loup Ventures, Metaplanet, Pioneer Fund, and a number of individual investors including Sam Altman, Jeff Rothschild, Oliver Cameron, Amar Shah, and Scott Gray. Rain has developed and recorded a working prototype of its neuromorphic processing unit (NPU), an end-to-end analog, trainable AI circuit that combines new algorithms for analog AI training and inference with an analog chip architecture. The NPU’s hardware architecture combines memory and compute as artificial synapses using memristors, overlaid on top of neuronal circuits in a sparse pattern, replicating the brain’s sparse connections, which the company says allows tens of millions of artificial neurons to be interconnected on a single chip. "At Rain, we are building a completely new kind of microchip - a fully analog neural network where software and hardware merge into an elegant, massively parallel information processor. This is a bold project that combines many disciplines: circuit theory, physics, pure mathematics, neural network architectures, materials science, and even neuroscience," said Gordon Wilson, co-founder and CEO of Rain. Founded in 2017, Rain Neuromorphics is headquartered in Redwood City, California, USA.

Cixin Technology, a general-purpose intelligent computing chip company, has successively completed angel rounds and angel+ rounds of financing of tens of millions of dollars. The angel round investor is Lenovo Capital; the lead investor in the angel+ round is Qiming Venture Partners, and the follow-up investors are Yuanhe Puhua, Yunjiu Capital, and Yunxiu Capital. It is reported that this round of funds will be used to accelerate the research and development of technology products and market expansion. Cixin Technology is mainly committed to developing a general-purpose intelligent computing system compatible with the ARM instruction set, providing chip products and one-stop solutions for general computing. The company has technical accumulation in the fields of CPU core research and development, SoC (System on Chip) and full-stack software development. Cixin Technology is headquartered in Shanghai and was established in 2021.

EdgeCortix has raised over $8 million in a Series A round led by Vajra Direct, with participation from Monozukuri Ventures and FuturePlay, among others. EdgeCortix provides deep neural network accelerator IP for edge inference. Its first line of IP consists of five single-core configurations ranging from 1.8 to 54 INT8 TOP/s, while using less than 0.6 watts in the minimum case and less than 8 watts in the maximum case. It also offers an SoC that leverages the processor. In addition, the startup has developed an AI hardware and software joint exploration engine to design edge AI chips while optimizing neural network models to achieve throughput, latency, power, and size targets. It is headquartered in Singapore and Tokyo, Japan, and was founded in 2019.

CogniFiber has raised $6 million in a Series A round led by Chartered Group. CogniFiber is developing photonic solution technology for AI hardware using fiber computing. The startup says its fiber computing allows for controllable, programmable interactions between input data channels, so that the output light transmits the desired mathematical function, covering both linear and nonlinear operations, and produces an "FPGA-like" photonic device that can implement many interchangeable functions by reprogramming control parameters. It also expects the technology to reach over 100 ExaOPS and efficiency of over 1,000 TOPS/Watt by 2026. CogniFiber's first product, scheduled to launch in late 2023, is a hardware system that implements trainable photonic autoencoder neural networks for applications including industrial IoT and cybersecurity. Founded in 2018, CogniFiber is headquartered in Rosh Ha'an, Israel.

UTARN, an advanced brain-like artificial intelligence technology developer exclusively invested by Tongwei Capital, has completed an angel+ round of financing of tens of millions of yuan. This round of financing will mainly be used for team expansion, chip tape-out, overall solution development and commercial testing. UTARN is a developer of brain-like artificial intelligence technology. It mainly uses its self-developed causal learning algorithm system and the independently innovative high-performance "Sibian No. 1" brain-like chip to form the "Silicon Brain SBB" series of brain-like decision-making computing boxes. The UTARN team comes from Tsinghua University, Beijing Institute of Technology and Beijing Normal University. There are not only professors who have been engaged in brain-like computing algorithms and chip research for many years, but also experts in cognitive neuroscience, as well as industry leaders in hardware, software and brain-like algorithms. UTARN was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Shenzhen.

Memory and Storage

Zhixun Innovation has completed an angel round of financing of over 100 million yuan. This round of financing was led by Sailer Investment, followed by listed company Runtu Shares and Wuxi Jinwu Venture Capital Partnership. Zhixun Innovation focuses on the research and development, design and sales of memory chips, and is committed to providing one-stop medium and low-capacity storage solutions for domestic and foreign customers. This time, the company's financing is mainly used for the research and development of related products, the procurement of key equipment, and the tape-out of two key products. Zhixun Innovation was founded in 2021 and is headquartered in Wuxi.

TaoCloud has completed a C round of financing of 100 million yuan, led by Yilian Kaitai Fund, followed by Bohai Chuangfu, and the original shareholders Linghang Xinjie and Everest oversubscribed. This round of financing will continue to increase the research and development of all-flash SDS 2.0 technology, market development, ecosystem construction and the layout of the information and innovation market. TaoCloud provides software-defined storage systems, including distributed unified storage systems, security-centric systems, and distributed all-flash storage systems. TaoCloud was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Beijing.

Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT) has received investments from Alibaba, YF Capital, Sunshine Insurance Group, TCL Capital, PICC, Qianhai Fund, Tencent Investment, Greater Bay Area Land Investment, Shenzhen Investment Holdings, Walden International, Jianxin Capital, and China Post. CXMT designs and manufactures DRAM, and the company currently offers DDR4, LPDDR4X, and DDR4 modules. Its first 12-inch fab will produce 60,000 wafers per month in 2021, and plans to reach 120,000 wpm in 2022, eventually increasing to 300,000 wpm. Founded in 2016, Changxin Memory Technologies is headquartered in Hefei.

EDA

Xingxin raised more than RMB 100 million in Series B financing, led by China Fortune Capital and followed by China Growth Capital. Xingxin is a high-tech EDA and IP enterprise with a high starting point, complete independent intellectual property rights and international competitiveness. It is committed to providing leading EDA tool chains and solutions for IC design companies from traditional processes to advanced processes. Xingxin was founded in 2018 and is headquartered in Hangzhou, China.

Cenos has secured €1 million in seed funding, led by Startup Wise Guys and Capitalia, with participation from Baltic Business Angels and several individual investors. Cenos develops engineering simulation software. The startup currently offers products for microstrip antenna design and placement, and induction heating. It plans to release two more applications this year. “Today’s engineering simulation software is still stuck in version 1.0. It’s big, bloated, and surprisingly bad at guiding engineers to solutions quickly. Cenos addresses this challenge with a platform that delivers advanced open source engineering software algorithms in vertical applications with a usable interface that doesn’t take 10 years to learn,” said Mihails Scepanskis, CEO and founder of Cenos. Cenos is based in Riga, Latvia, and was founded in 2017.

manufacturing

Instrumental has closed a $50 million Series C round led by BAM Elevate, in partnership with Canaan, Root Ventures, and Eclipse Ventures as a return to investors. Instrumental provides a cloud-based platform for optimizing electronics manufacturing, using AI to detect defects, identify root causes, and provide insights. It supports both consumer electronics and mission-critical industrial electronics. "When I was an engineer, I was amazed at how much waste and inefficiency electronics manufacturers were used to seeing as a cost of doing business," said Anna-Katrina Shedletsky, CEO and founder of Instrumental. "We believe in a different future - one where software uses data from every individual unit to quickly change processes and designs, eliminating waste." Funds will be used for new product development and hiring. Instrumental was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, USA.

equipment

Radium Laser has received "hundreds of millions" of RMB in its Series C financing from GP Capital, Legend Capital, etc. Investors include Junhai Chuangxin, Jinpu Intelligent, Haitong New Energy, Yongxin Ark, etc. Radium Laser was founded in 2012 and is headquartered in Suzhou. It focuses on the field of ultra-precision laser equipment for various high-end industrial applications, mainly used in semiconductor wafer manufacturing, packaging and testing, consumer electronics and other related processing fields.

3D 打印初创公司Scrona已完成 960 万美元的 A 轮融资，计划将微型3D打印技术的商业化。670 万美元的 A 轮融资由AM Ventures牵头，TRUMPF Ventures 、Verve Ventures和Manz GmbH Management Consulting and Investment 跟投，而 290 万美元的赠款由瑞士教育、研究和创新秘书处提供。Scrona 开发了一种用于大规模制造的多喷嘴静电打印头，打印分辨率在亚微米范围内。这家初创公司的 MEMS 打印头技术适用于半导体和显示器制造，可以在任何材料上进行打印，并且“能够将制造步骤减少 10 倍，同时还可以显著减少材料、能源和水的使用”Scrona的联合创始人兼首席执行官Patrick Galliker说。资金将用于加速产业化和商业化，以及为半导体制造、高端显示器、电子和PCB等行业开发新应用。Scrona成立于 2014 年，是苏黎世联邦理工学院的衍生公司，总部位于瑞士苏黎世。