China flexible display developer gets $800m in equity, debt funding
Royole Corporation, a China-based flexible display technology developer, has completed its Series D funding round with $240 million in commitments from a group of local investors and also raised $560 million in debt financing.
The equity investors include Warmsun Holding Group, Hanfor Capital, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, Tanshi Capital, and Zhonghai Shengrong Capital Management. This follows an announcement from Royole in May that Beijing Zhongtai Chuanghui Equity Investment Fund had contributed RMB400 million ($58 million) to the Series D round.
The debt financing will come from China CITIC Bank, Agricultural Bank of China, Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, and Ping An Bank, the company said at a signing ceremony, as reported by local media. The capital will go towards expanding production facilities – Royole is spending $1.7 billion on a factory in Shenzhen that will have an annual production capacity of more than 50 million displays – and research into next-generation human-machine interface technologies.
Founded in 2012, Royole develops flexible display technologies and related consumer electronic products and sensors. The company also licenses its intellectual property rights and provides services and technology solutions to customers in industries associated with display applications, including consumer electronics manufacturers.
In 2014, Royole claimed it had developed the world’s thinnest full-color flexible displays with a thickness of 0.01 millimeter and a bending radius of 1 millimeter. The following year it began mass production of a foldable virtual mobile theater device known as Royole-X.
The company raised approximately $280 million across several rounds between 2012 and 2016. It secured Series A funding from Shenzhen Capital Group and Shenzhen Green Pine Capital in 2012 and a Series B led by IDG Capital the following year. The Series C came in 2015, provided by CITIC Capital, Green Pine, and AlphaWealth.
Last year, Royole raised around $80 million in pre-Series D round from strategic investor Warmsun Holding Group at a valuation of $3 billion.
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