Suzhou-headquartered firm Senscomm Semiconductor announced Thursday that it has closed its Series A round led by Hubei Xiaomi Yangtze River Industrial Fund and joined by Glory Ventures, without disclosing financial details, reported 36Kr.
The Hubei Xiaomi Yangtze River Industrial Fund was jointly initiated in 2017 by Xiaomi, the Hubei provincial government and the government-backed Yangtze River Industry Fund, to develop Xiaomi’s ecosystem of products and services, according to news portal Caixin.
Senscomm Semiconductor will use the funds to expand its engineering team to develop and mass-produce new system on a chip (SoC) products supporting the WiFi 6 standard, said the company. The firm will also drive the application of these products in the consumer goods market, enterprise IT systems, and Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
WiFi 6, or 802.11ax, is the newest version of the 802.11 standard for wireless network transmission, usually known as WiFi.
The investment comes at a time when the Chinese government is encouraging companies to develop in-house core technologies and products such as chips.
The deal also represents China’s fourth-largest smartphone maker Xiaomi enlarging its bet in the semiconductor sector. In 2017, Xiaomi launched its own chip, the Surge 1, which was developed by its subsidiary Pine Core and later equipped in Xiaomi’s Mi 5C smartphone. The firm spun off part of Pine Core in 2019 to form a new company called Nanjing Big Fish Semiconductor, to attract outside investors for further developing AI and IoT chips.
36Kr is KrASIA’s parent company