The funds will be used to speed up the development of new products and expand the layout in the fields of new energy vehicles, autonomous driving and C-V2X.
Nanjing Semidrive Technology Ltd. (SemiDrive), focusing on automotive SoC, won a series A financing of CNY 500 million, led by CTC Capital, followed by investors including MatrixPartners China, Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group (LCIG), Vertex Ventures and Sequoia Capital China.
In May 2020, the company launched three kinds of automotive chips – X9, V9 and G9 – for applications in smart cockpits, smart driving and the central gateway. In addition, it cooperated with 71 partners to release one-stop smart intelligent mobility integrated solutions and reference designs.
The chairman of SemiDrive, Zhang Qiang, said that the company has formed strategic cooperations with over 5 original equipment manufacturers (OEM) and more than 10 Tier1 companies and is preparing for small-batch shipments and mass production in the second half of this year; the first mass-produced model will be launched in the first half of next year.
At present, the market share of the domestic automotive semiconductor industry is almost monopolized by foreign manufacturers. The self-sufficiency rates of China's automotive semiconductors and car-level processors are less than 3% and 1% respectively.