China's Enflame secures $273m Series D
Shanghai International Group (SIG) – acting through an assortment of investment units – has led a CNY 2bn (USD 273m) Series D round for Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Enflame Technology.
The lead investors under SIG were identified as SIG International Asset Management, Guoxin Venture Capital, Guofang Innovation, GP Capital’s Shanghai Fintech Fund, and Guohe Investment.
Additional commitments came from Tencent Holdings, Meituan, Summitview Capital, YTI Capital, Hundreds Capital, Redpoint Ventures China, Guangfa Qianhe Investment, Delta Capital, and Shanghai Pudong Investment Holding, according to a statement.
Tencent was Enflame’s earliest investor, backing a CNY 340m pre-Series A in 2018. The next two rounds of CNY 300m in 2019 and CNY 700m in 2020 were led by Redpoint and Summitview, respectively. Then CPE, China Capital Investment Group, and Primavera Capital Group led a CNY 1.8bn Series C in early 2021, supported by Tencent, Summitview, and Redpoint.
Established in 2018, Enflame specializes in computing power integrated circuits (ICs) used in cloud infrastructure. With the broader application of AI, there is increased demand for AI model training and reasoning, which can deliver higher computing power at low cost. The company has developed three generations of AI training and reasoning products since its inception.
Enflame’s offering is compatible with chips, printed circuit boards, all-in-one smart computers, liquid-cooled computing power clusters, and supporting software systems. The company is also pushing into generative AI, launching a model-as-a-service (MaaS) platform that is intended to provide a full-stack ecosystem from model training to applications.
"With the rapid evolution of generative large models, computing power based on high-performance AI chips has become the key to the development of the digital economy,” said Lidong Zhao, founder, chairman and CEO of Enflame.
“Facing a highly competitive yet highly interdependent ecosystem, Enflame has always adhered to opensource innovation and collaborated with leading industry players on product improvement and creating a solid computing power base.”
Private equity investment in China's semiconductor space - excluding buyouts - rose from USD 500m in 2019 to USD 4.6bn, USD 5.7bn, and USD 11.4bn over the next three years. Only USD 2.7bn has been put to work in 2023 to date.
Enflame is one of a clutch of developers of AI chips, also known as GPU or CPU chips, that raised considerable sums in 2020 and 2021. Biren Technology, Moore Threads, Metax Integrated Circuits, and Iluvatar CoreX number among its peers. Last year, momentum shifted to automotive chips, as demonstrated by investments in companies such as SiEngine Technology and Indiemicro.
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