According to ChinaTimes’ report, Big Fund II is once again making strategic moves, this time targeting a stake in Tsing Micro Technology, a company specializing in reconfigurable computing chips.

Reconfigurable architecture chips possess extensive general computing capabilities, making them essential for addressing high computing power demands. Big Fund II’s investment is a proactive step to position itself in the upcoming computing power market, avoiding potential “bottleneck” crises.

Amidst the pressure of technology restrictions from the United States, Big Fund II, tasked with supporting the development of domestic semiconductor companies in China, has been active in recent investment initiatives.

At the end of October this year, Big Fund II invested CNY 14.5 billion, participating in the capital increase of the memory production project at ChangXin XinQiao.

ChinaFund News reports that Tsing Micro Technology’s main business focuses on innovative research and development, as well as industrial applications of reconfigurable computing chips.

Tsing Micro Technology recently underwent a business change, with the addition of ten institutional shareholders, including National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Phase II (Big Fund II), GigaDevice, CMB International, and Beijing Zhongguancun Science City Technology Growth Investment Partnership, among others. The registered capital of the company increased from approximately CNY 33.18 million to around CNY 38.9 million, with Big Fund II holding a 5.8824% stake.

The report highlights that Tsing Micro Technology’s technical team originates from the reconfigurable computing team at Beijing Tsinghua University’s Institute of Microelectronics. The team has been selected for three consecutive years (since 2021) in EETimes’s “Silicon 100: Startups Worth Watching” list.

Tsing Micro Technology’s Co-founder and CTO, Peng Ouyang, stated in November 2022 that faced with the explosive growth in the demand for computing power due to artificial intelligence, mainstream GPU chips require significant investment and cannot meet the “computing power black hole” brought about by the development of large models. He emphasized that reconfigurable computing chips are a solution to this challenge.

Since 2019, Tsing Micro Technology has undergone multiple rounds of financing. In January 2019, angel investors included Baidu and Focus Media. Subsequent Series A funding involved investments from SK Hynix in South Korea, Green Pine Capital Partners, and SenseTime, among others. Series B financing was led by CDB RW Funds, with participation from SenseTime and Legend Capital.

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(Photo credit: Tsing Micro Tech)

Following China’s Big Fund’s substantial $14.56 billion RMB investment in Changxin Xinqiao Storage Technology, a memory chip manufacturer, at the end of October, there are now reports of an additional $39 billion RMB injection.

China is actively building a domestic semiconductor supply chain, and according to Nikkei Asia, Changxin Xinqiao is set to utilize this funding to expedite the construction of its facility in Hefei, Anhui province, with the aim of achieving mass production within a span of three years.

Hefei is also the location of a production facility for ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT), a major semiconductor manufacturer specializing in DRAM production. Changxin Xinqiao shares some shareholders and its general manager with CXMT, according to Tianyancha.

Chinese media points out that Changxin Xinqiao has ambitious plans to produce DRAM chips in Hefei, destined for use in computers and a wide array of electronic devices. At present, Changxin Xinqiao has initiated the tendering process for new facility equipment and is poised to accelerate procurement and related procedures using the recently acquired funding.

With support from the Hefei City government, Changxin Xinqiao initiated the DRAM factory construction project in 2019 and laid out a policy to make use of domestically manufactured semiconductor production equipment.

(Image: CXMT)

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