Yuntian Lifei, an AI chipmaker also known as Intellifusion, has reaped more than RMB 1 billion (USD 147 million) from Shenzhen Tequ Jianshe Fazhan Group Company Limited and China Electronics Corporation, both of which are state-owned companies, 36Kr reported on Monday.
The announcement comes not long after the Shenzhen-based company recently closed a RMB 1 billion pre-IPO round in April, led by Utrustfund, Forebright Capital Management Limited, and US-based Walden International.
Founded in 2014, Yuntian has developed an algorithm platform, Arctern, for face and gesture recognition, an in-house chip, DeepEye 1000, and a big data platform, Matrix, which collects city-level data for analysis.
The company provides police stations, traffic management authorities, airports, and industrial parks with surveillance and security solutions in more than 100 cities in China. Yuntian claims the company has helped police locate more than 300 missing children and elderly people.
Yuntian also provides retail insights for supermarkets and shopping malls by analyzing visitors’ faces, body shapes and movements, and clothing.
This new round comes at a time when the Chinese government has called on enterprises to develop their own core technologies, including chips, with venture capital funds likewise betting heavily on domestic AI and chipmaking.
In June, Beijing-based Eswin, another chipset developer, which focuses on integrated circuits for companies manufacturing displays and wearable devices, closed a RMB 2 billion (USD 283 million) Series B round. Later that month, Shanghai-headquartered semiconductor firm Xinyi Information Technology closed its Series A+ round, collecting nearly RMB 200 million (USD 28.3 million).
