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.
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
New apartments in Taiwan’s major cities are getting smaller, while old apartments are increasingly occupied by older people, many of whom live alone, government data showed. The phenomenon has to do with sharpening unaffordable property prices and an aging population, property brokers said. Apartments with one bedroom that are two years old or older have gained a noticeable presence in the nation’s six special municipalities as well as Hsinchu county and city in the past five years, Evertrust Rehouse Co (永慶房產集團) found, citing data from the government’s real-price transaction platform. In Taipei, apartments with one bedroom accounted for 19 percent of deals last
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the