Flagchip Secures Financing, Xiaomi Joins In
On Monday, Suzhou Flagchip Semiconductor Co., Ltd. (Flagchip), a new company that focuses on automotive chips, announced the completion of a new round of financing. This is the fourth round of financing the company has completed since its establishment one year ago, with a cumulative amount of several hundred million yuan.
Flagchip’s investors include Shangqi Capital, Xiaomi, Shunwei Capital, Glory Ventures, Hua Capital, CDH Investments, Sinovation Ventures and Junxi Capital. Among them, Glory Ventures was the joint leading investor of its angel round of financing.
This new round of investment will be used to accelerate the company’s mass production of its second generation smart car body controller and chassis controller, while continuing with further investment in R&D and recruitment.
Flagchip is mainly engaged in the R&D and sales of high-end automobile controller chips. It aims to fill the gap for a new generation of automobile controller chips for intelligent and connected vehicles in China. The company is committed to becoming a leading manufacturer of automobile and industrial controllers in China.
In just one year, the FC4 series of 32-bit auto-level MCU chips based on the Arm Cortex-M4 has been a tapeout. It is expected that engineering samples will be obtained in the first quarter of 2022 and mass production will be possible around July or August.
The FC4 series chips have ultra-low power consumption, a highly efficient configuration, and are designed according to the standards of AEC-Q100 and ISO26262 ASIL-B, which is a 32-bit MCU with low power consumption, high reliability and high performance. They can be widely used in different methods in cars such as BCM, T-box, Motor control and Chassis and Safety.
Sun Changxu, senior partner of Xiaomi Changjiang Industrial Investment Fund Management, commented on the investment: “Since Xiaomi entered the field of smart electric vehicles, it has paid close attention to well-performing companies in the upstream chain of the automotive industry. Nowadays. the relationship between automakers and chip suppliers has become closer. The research threshold of auto-level MCU/DCU is very high. Flagchip has an excellent team and has vast experience in the mass production of car-level MCU. We expect Flagchip to seize the opportunity to develop automotive semiconductors in China and grow into a leading supplier of automotive level chips in the country. “
