Tencent Holdings-backed Chinese artificial intelligence chip start-up Enflame has kicked off the “tutoring” process with an investment bank ahead of a planned initial public offering (IPO).
The Shanghai-based unicorn – which was valued at US$1.65 billion last September, according to venture deal tracker Pitchbook – has hired China International Capital Corporation, one of the country’s biggest investment banks, to coach company executives on IPO-related issues, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) announced in a statement on Monday.
All IPO applicants in China are required to go through tutoring before filing a listing plan to regulators, a process that takes between three to 12 months. Enflame did not disclose where it plans to go public or how much it aims to raise.
Founded by two former employees at US semiconductor giant
Advanced Micro Devices in March 2018, Enflame is among a group of Chinese graphics processing unit (GPU) developers hoping to take advantage of Nvidia’s absence in the country. Under US export controls, California-based Nvidia is
barred from shipping its best GPUs to mainland customers.
A darling of China’s state-backed chip investment fund as well as Big Tech companies, Enflame had taken in more than US$742 million from eight fundraising rounds as of last September, Pitchbook data showed.
Tencent, its largest shareholder, put in 21.4 million yuan (US$3 million) for a 21 per cent stake, while the China Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, also known as
the Big Fund, owns a 5 per cent stake with an investment of 5.44 million yuan, according to business registry record provider Qichacha.
Co-founders Zhao Lidong and Zhang Yalin, who control the company and have signed an agreement to act in concert, hold 32.5 per cent voting rights, according to the CSRC statement.
Chinese chip designers are under mounting pressure from investors to offer an exit path, as channels for cashing out have significantly narrowed in recent years and venture capital has dried up in the country
amid geopolitical tensions and economic headwinds.
Enflame – along with rivals Iluvatar Corex,
Moore Threads, Biren Technology,
Huawei Technologies’ Ascend – targets mainland companies looking for domestic alternatives to foreign chips.
“China’s computing clusters are changing from being foreign-GPU-dominated to a combination of Chinese GPUs and foreign ones,” Enflame’s chief ecosystem officer Li Xingyu
told an audience at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai in July. But he added that much of the computational power in China still sits idle amid a lack of demand.
Enflame, which relies on external manufacturers to produce its designs, is currently not on the US trade blacklist, which means it can access the services of leading global foundries such as
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
However, the start-up still had to revise down its chip designs to secure production at the Taiwanese giant, according to a Reuters report in June, citing unnamed sources.
