China chip designer Yige raises $42m angel round

CTC and Vlight are both sector specialist investors, focusing on semiconductors and the automotive supply chain, respectively.

Founded in January, Yige has established a team of 80 that works on field-programmable gate array (FGPA) products and electronic design automation (EDA) tool chains. The company plans to launch its first FPGA chip within two years.

FPGA are integrated circuits that can be reconfigured by the customer after manufacturing. FGPA chips play a key role in embedded system development because they facilitate partitioning trials before system architecture is finalised. EDA assists in the definition, planning, design, implementation, verification and manufacturing of chips.

The field is dominated by foreign players like Xilinx, Altera, and Actel. Yige is essentially a domestic substation play that supports China's policy initiative of replacing imports of high-end products with locally-made alternatives. Gartner estimates that China’s FPGA market is growing at a compound annual rate of 25% and will represent two-thirds of the global market by 2025.

Other Chinese players in this space include Gowin, which claims to be the only local FGPA specialist to achieve mainstream certification. It raised an extended Series B round of CNY 880m (USD 132m) earlier this year. Guangzhou Bay Area Semiconductor Industry Group led the round and several government guidance funds also participated, underlining the level of policy support.

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• Topics
• Greater China
• Early-stage
• Technology
• China
• semiconductor
• Matrix Partners
• Sequoia Capital
• Redpoint China Ventures