EqualOcean has been informed that ASPIRING (Chinese: 微崇半导体), a semiconductor test equipment company, has recently completed nearly 100 million yuan of Series A financing. It is understood that this financing is ASPIRING's 5th financing in two years, and the total financing amount in the past is nearly one hundred million yuan.
Founded in March 2021, ASPIRING is a semiconductor inspection equipment manufacturer based on nonlinear optics, initiated by a team of seafarers in semiconductor technology and co-founded by domestic senior scientists and engineers. At present, the team is more than 30 people, with R&D staff accounting for more than 70%.
Semiconductor test equipment through each process of crystal manufacturing, is the semiconductor front-end manufacturing equipment, second only to the thin film deposition, lithography and etching of the fourth core equipment. According to SEMI data show that in 2022 the global test equipment market size of about 10.8 billion U.S. dollars, the Chinese mainland market size of about 3.2 billion U.S. dollars.
China has become the world's largest testing equipment market but basically monopolized by foreign manufacturers. China International Bidding Network data statistics, the local production line inspection equipment is still mainly dependent on KLA, Onto, Camtek and other imported brands, localization rate of only 2%. With the continuous imposition of overseas restrictions, detection equipment has become lithography outside the threat of a larger short board.
At the same time, detection equipment industry barriers are high. Requirements for equipment manufacturers of optics, electronics, mobile platforms, sensors, etc. have a unique design and a large number of exclusive know-how, and with the continuous upgrading of the chip process, to provide more sensitive, faster and more accurate measurement capabilities.
Applied optical inspection technology is the mainstream inspection and measurement technology in the market, which is characterized by high accuracy and speed. Based on inheriting the advantages of optical inspection, Xinchao's innovative second harmonic wave inspection technology innovatively applies ultrafast optics and nonlinear optics in the field of semiconductor inspection, detecting the "invisible" internal lattice defects and electrical characteristics in wafer production, and providing customers with solutions to various problems at all stages of R&D, ramp-up and mass production.
This round of financing was co-funded by Xinchao Group (Chinese: 新潮创投), C&D Group (Chinese: 建发新兴投资), Tsinghua Innovation Ventures (Chinese: 水木创投), Yongchangsheng Capital (Chinese: 永昌盛资本) and Sunic-Capital (Chinese: 临芯投資), a long-time shareholder, will continue to raise capital. Proceeds from the financing will be used for new product development, mass production, market expansion and team building.