Semiconductors

Qianhe Yibang closes a 2 billion yuan B round for 3D compute-in-memory chips

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Qianhe Yibang, a leader in 3D compute-in-memory chips, recently closed a B round above 2 billion yuan. As China accelerates high-quality integrated-circuit development and Indigenous breakthroughs in core technologies, innovative firms with self-developed ability and new chip architectures are becoming central to industrial upgrading. Globally, the digital economy has entered a compute-centric phase, and memory … Read more

SMIC’s net profit jumps 2.6 times as US curbs miss the point of the AI boom

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For years, three words trailed SMIC wherever it went: behind, restricted, catching up. It could not buy the best tools, could not take the most advanced orders, and the market kept asking the same question: when would it close the gap with TSMC? For a company carrying the hopes of China’s domestic chipmaking, simply surviving … Read more

Sunzhan founder Zeng Yi: AI is tearing down chip-design barriers, and we want to be the semiconductor industry’s Copilot

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Zeng Yi’s office tea was refilled again and again as the conversation unfolded, a typical Guangdong reception: no need to sit stiff, but the matter was clear. He speaks with a Chaoshan accent, not fast, always finishing a sentence with a smile, eyes narrowing, leaning in, easy to relax around. Talk of AI and RISC-V … Read more

One AI factory needs 1.5 million GPUs: NVIDIA is eyeing a US$600 billion prize

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How expensive is AI, really? We once measured compute in GPU counts. Now OpenAI and NVIDIA measure it in gigawatts. On 17 August, the PORTS-Pike project disclosure showed OpenAI building world-class AI infrastructure in Ohio. OpenAI said it has secured about 8 GW of IT capacity at the site, with NVIDIA providing credit support for … Read more

Nation Technologies bets on high-end MCUs for embodied AI and AI infrastructure

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Future MCU competition is not just about performance, but who understands the application better, said Yang Ping, marketing director of Nation Technologies, at the Munich Shanghai Electronics Fair. The fair opened on 1 July in Shanghai. Amid the displays, control-chip innovation around robots and AI infrastructure stood out. As an MCU leader in AI, Nation … Read more

US Commerce chief warns Apple off ChangXin Memory, exposing a supply-chain fault line

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PChome reported on 17 August that Apple is grappling with a memory shortage that has pushed up production costs and created supply-chain risk. To relieve the crisis Apple wants to bring in Chinese supply and has already been testing memory from ChangXin Memory, also known as CXMT. CXMT’s memory passed Apple’s validation, then Washington stepped … Read more

Jieluo Intelligent breaks ground on 1.2 billion yuan AMR base in Suzhou, targeting 2,000 robots a year

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Recently, Jieluo Intelligent Equipment (Suzhou) held a groundbreaking for its headquarters project in Wuzhong district. The site covers 42.5 mu, about 2.8 hectares, with roughly 70,000 square metres of floor area and total investment of 1.2 billion yuan. It will build a headquarters base producing 2,000 trackless-navigation robots, known as AMRs, and 500 wafer smart-storage … Read more

Qianhe Yibang raises 2 billion yuan for 3D memory chips

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Qianhe Yibang, a pioneer in 3D compute-in-memory chips, has closed a Series B of over 2 billion yuan. The round gathered a heavyweight mix of state capital and financial investors, including the national structural-adjustment fund, China Mobile’s chain-leader fund, Sequoia-sister vehicles, Hillhouse-linked and other first-tier institutions. NetEase Youdao and China Mobile’s chain-leader fund, long-term shareholders … Read more

Sunzhan: the RISC-V chip-design Copilot

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Sunzhan, founded in 2022 and still around twenty people, builds custom RISC-V processor cores (CPU, DSP, NPU) for domain-specific architectures. Founder Zeng Yi argues that AI has moved the decision over chip architecture out of the chip company and into the AI company: the model now dictates the silicon, and RISC-V’s freedom to add custom … Read more