Chinese semiconductor start-up SpacemiT, fresh off an over US$86 million funding round, is gearing up for mass production of its new RISC-V chips, using an architecture rivalling Intel’s and Arm’s, which is seen as Beijing’s hope for achieving chip self-sufficiency.
The Hangzhou-based company recently completed a series B funding round raising more than 600 million yuan from investors, including fellow Hangzhou firm Huaxia Hengtian, the Beijing Artificial Intelligence Industry Investment Fund and Hong Kong’s Brizan Ventures.
The capital injection will help accelerate research and development of the company’s next-generation RISC-V AI chips and strengthen the firm’s talent pool, as it pins high hopes on the rapid rise of artificial intelligence to drive wider adoption of the open-source architecture, according to SpacemiT.
“We are firmly optimistic about AI and large language models, and that’s why we are driving the intelligent upgrade [with RISC-V-based chips],” Chen Zhijian, founder and CEO of SpacemiT, told the Post last Thursday.
With SpacemiT’s chips designed to support the deployment of large language models, Chen is betting on the rise of Edge AI – devices that can run AI algorithms locally rather than in the cloud – to boost the adoption of RISC-V chips.
K3, the company’s latest RISC-V AI central processing unit, would start mass production this April, after completing tape-out – the final step in semiconductor design before going into production – last year, Chen said.
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