AAA weekly
2021-08-02
Copyright FOURIN, Inc. 2024
Semiconductor Developer SemiDrive Launches Large-scale Chip Supply
Nanjing SemiDrive Technology is a Chinese company established in June 2018 that engages in research and development of in-vehicle semiconductor products. Headquartered in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, it has facilities in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, Guangdong province. Since its founding, SemiDrive has raised more than 700 million CHY through three fund raisings. The funds raised are mainly used for research and development of new products in fields such as smart cockpits for automobiles, ADAS (advanced driver assistance systems), domain controller processing chips and C-V2X (cellular vehicle to everything).
In May 2020, SemiDrive announced three types of in-vehicle chips, X9, V9 and G9, which were developed for smart cockpit, autonomous driving and central gateway. In March 2021, the company received orders for 1 million in-vehicle chips including the above three types of products annually and started mass shipment. Customers are foreign and Chinese automakers, and Tier 1 suppliers.
SemiDrive: Company Overview, Timeline and Management
Overview
| Full name: | Nanjing SemiDrive Technology Ltd. |
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| Short name: | SemiDrive | |
| URL: | semidrive.com | |
| Location: | Nanjing, Jiangsu province | |
| Established: | June 2018 | |
| Corporate representative: | Jason Zhang (Zhang Qiang in Chinese) Chairman | |
| Capital: | Approx. 8.18 million CNY | |
| Shareholders: | Qingdao Huaxin Chuangyuan Venture Capital Center, Chezhijia (Zhuhai) Investment Center, ZAQ Technology, Seine, Ningbo Ruixin Investment Management, etc. | |
| Business scope: | Design, R&D, manufacturing and sales of semiconductor chips, electronic products and computer software / hardware. Technical service and consulting. | |
| Facilities: | Headquarters = Nanjing, Jiangsu province. Design / R&D center = Shanghai and Beijing. Office = Shenzhen, Guangdong province. | |
| Employees: | Over 200 (R&D) | |
| Business model: | Fabless management that designs and develops products and outsources manufacturing to an external factory. | |
Timeline
・Jun. 2018: Co-founded by Jason Zhang (Zhang Qiang in Chinese) Chairman and Maggie Qiu (Qiu Yujing in Chinese) CEO. ・Aug. 2018: Raised 100 million CNY from Walden International and other investors in angel round. ・Apr. 2019: Raised hundreds of millions of CNY from Lenovo Capital and Incubator Group and other investors in pre-series A round. ・Jul. 2019: Obtained certification of the functional safety standard ISO 26262 for automobiles from the German third-party certification body TÜV Rheinland. ・May 2020: Introduced chips used for smart cockpits, smart driving and central gateways. ・Sep. 2020: Concluded strategic partnership agreement with China Automotive Innovation, an alliance of major Chinese automakers and Nanjing Jiangning Economic Development Zone Technology. ・Sep. 2020: Raised 500 million CNY from CTC Capital and other investors in series A round. ・Dec. 2020: X9, V9 and G9 chips passed AEC-Q100 (vehicle integrated circuit) certification. ・Mar. 2021: Started mass manufacturing of chips. ・Apr. 2021: Jointly released the “Longchi” central gateway platform with FAW R&D Center. ・Apr. 2021: Unveiled four new products X9U, V9T, G9Q and G9V chips at the Shanghai Motor Show (see details below). ・Apr. 2021: Concluded strategic partnership agreement with BlackBerry QNX in the smart cockpit sector.Management
・Maggie Qiu (Qiu Yujing in Chinese): Founder and CEO. Has experience working for IC industry startups and listed companies in Silicon Valley. Worked for SoC (system on chip) R&D companies Pixelworks, Freescale and former Motorola Semiconductor Products in China. ・Jason Zhang (Zhang Qiang in Chinese): Chairman and co-founder. Has experience working for Delphi, Philips Semiconductors, Infineon, Freescale and NXP. Has experience in product planning, team management, marketing and sales of electronic components and semiconductors for automobiles. (Created using SemiDrive’s PR materials and various media sources)SemiDrive announced four new products X9U, V9T, G9Q and G9V at the Shanghai Motor Show held in April 2021. The X9U is a chip for in-vehicle cockpits. The computing performance of the CPU is up to 100kDMIPS. It can support output to up to 10 independent full HD displays at the same time. The V9T is a chip for autonomous driving. It has a redundant configuration that employs two sets of completely independent quad-core Cortex-A55 chip clusters. The G9Q is a gateway chip that uses an SMMU (system memory management unit), and the G9V is a high-performance chip developed based on the G9Q that can improve processing capacity.