Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd (清華紫光) has clinched as much as 150 billion yuan (US$22 billion) of financing from two Chinese government-backed investors, amassing a pool of funds to pursue acquisitions and build a world-class semiconductor industry.
The state-linked chipmaker is to receive 100 billion yuan from China Development Bank (國家開發銀行), a policy lender overseen by the Cabinet, in the years until 2020.
It is to get another 50 billion yuan from a national chip fund set up in 2014 to drive advances in domestic semiconductors, Unigroup said in a statement on its Web site.
The company did not describe how the capital would be deployed, but Unigroup has been an aggressive acquirer and capacity-builder, the standard-bearer for an effort to wean China off its reliance on foreign technology.
It is building a US$30 billion memorychip production complex in Nanjing that is to become China’s largest when completed. It is also preparing to expand its memory and storage facilities in Wuhan.
The capital injection “is poised to lend strong support to Unigroup’s rapid expansion in the industry” and “speed the process of technology upgrades and lift our core competitiveness,” the company said in a statement after signing the agreements with the two investors.
China is spending an estimated US$150 billion over 10 years to try to achieve a leading position in semiconductor design and manufacturing, an ambitious plan that US executives and officials have warned could harm US interests.
Unigroup, an affiliate of the business arm of Tsinghua University, has become the largest semiconductor player in a nation dependent on imports for components such as high-performance processors and 3D-NAND chips.
Unigroup and other Tsinghua affiliates have pulled off a number of acquisitions, including of RDA Microelectronics Inc (銳迪科) and Spreadtrum Communications Inc (展訊通信), to beef up their design capability.
They have also signed partnership deals with global players including Western Digital Corp.
However, the merger and acquisition spree has hit a wall of late — Tsinghua was forced to withdraw a planned investment in Western Digital after the deal threatened to invite US government scrutiny, while a Taiwanese acquisition also fell through.
The company’s major business units and affiliates include IC developer Unigroup Guoxin Co (紫光國芯), formed via a series of mergers of state-backed entities, and Changjiang Storage (長江儲存), which was the result of a merger between Unigroup’s own memorychip operations and a government-run factory last year.
The EU and US are nearing an agreement to coordinate on producing and securing critical minerals, part of a push to break reliance on Chinese supplies. The potential deal would create incentives, such as minimum prices, that could advantage non-Chinese suppliers, according to a draft of an “action plan” seen by Bloomberg. The EU and US would also cooperate on standards, investments and joint projects, as well as coordinate on any supply disruptions by countries like China. The two sides are additionally seeking other “like-minded partners” to join a multicountry accord to help create these new critical mineral supply chains, which feed into
For weeks now, the global tech industry has been waiting for a major artificial intelligence (AI) launch from DeepSeek (深度求索), seen as a benchmark for China’s progress in the fast-moving field. More than a year has passed since the start-up put Chinese AI on the map in early last year with a low-cost chatbot that performed at a similar level to US rivals. However, despite reports and rumors about its imminent release, DeepSeek’s next-generation “V4” model is nowhere in sight. Speculation is also swirling over the geopolitical implications of which computer chips were chosen to train and power the new
Elon Musk’s lieutenants have reached out to chip industry suppliers, including Applied Materials Inc, Tokyo Electron Ltd and Lam Research Corp, for his envisioned Terafab, early steps in an audacious and likely arduous attempt to break into the production of cutting-edge chips. Staff working for the joint venture between Tesla Inc and Space Exploration Technologies Corp (SpaceX) have sought price quotes and delivery times for an array of chipmaking gear, people familiar with the matter said. In past weeks, they’ve contacted makers of photomasks, substrates, etchers, depositors, cleaning devices, testers and other tools, according to the people, who asked not to
Japan approved ￥631.5 billion (US$3.97 billion) in additional subsidies to hasten Rapidus Corp’s entry into the high-stakes artificial intelligence (AI) chipmaking arena, ramping up support for a project widely regarded as a long shot. The capital is intended to bankroll Rapidus’ work for information technology firm Fujitsu Ltd, one of the initial customers that Tokyo hopes would get the signature endeavor off the ground. The new money raises the fees and investments that the government is injecting into the start-up to ￥2.6 trillion by the end of the current fiscal year to March next year, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and
RSS