The general-purpose processor chip designer will use the fresh capital for R&D and market expansion.
Shanghai-based Biren Technology (壁仞科技), which designs intelligent processors, has raised CNY 1.10 billion in the Series A round of financing announced on June 16. Qiming Venture Partners led the deal, while IDG Capital, Walden International, Glory Ventures, Gree Ventures, Green Pine Capital Partners as well as a few others joined the party.
A nine-month-old startup, Biren claims to have gathered industry experts, among which 20% hold PhD degrees. Employing Harvard, Berkeley, Tsinghua University and Peking University alumni, it is among a few Chinese computer hardware companies that have lately received massive support from major local tech venture capital organizations.
While this event is arguably the largest early-stage financing round in the country's chipmaking space this year, there have been some other milestones since the COVID-19 outbreak started spoiling the global economic game. For one, in May, AI accelerator developer Enflame took home CNY 700 million from Summitview Capital, Tencent and Redpoint Ventures, to name a few.
China's technology sector is recently heating up. We expect the ongoing rollout of the fifth generation of wireless networks to give it a major boost to the new cohort of domestically raised hardware startups.