Last year alone, Cambricon received a total of CNY100 million (US$15 million) worth of licensing orders for the IP instruction set of Cambricon-1A chips from makers of smartphones, security devices, and wearable devices. Huawei’s HiSilicon Kirin 970 chipset, to be rolled out in September, is also reportedly to carry Cambricon-1A chip instruction set.
Chen Tianshi, founder and CEO of the company, said while the company has utilized the funds raised in a pre-A round in 2016 to industrialize its Cambricon-1A chip as the first chip dedicated for high-performance neural network applications, the new proceeds will be used to support deployments of more advanced AI chip products and processors for cloud and terminals, and development of standard AI instruction set architectures.
China-based AI chip startup Cambricon Technologies has newly raised US$100 million in series A round funding to support its development of advanced AI chips, which is expected to help turn the company into a tech unicorn with over US$1 billion in valuation in the near future, according to company sources.