Cambricon Plans to Raise $395M for R&D Through Private Placement

Beijing-based artificial intelligence enterprise Cambricon disclosed its plan for increasing private placement, intending to issue shares to specific targets raising capital with a total of 2.65 billion yuan ($395.1 million).

According to the announcement, the net amount after deducting issuance expenses planned to be invested in the advanced technical platform chip project is 810 million yuan ($120 million), the stable technical platform chip project is 1.408 billion yuan ($209 million), the general intelligent processor technology R&D project for emerging application scenarios is 219 million yuan ($32 million) and the supplementary working capital is 213 million yuan ($31 million).

Regarding the purpose of this increase, the company said that, firstly, it would increase investment in advanced technique and break through the R&D of high-end intelligent chips with better integration, stronger computing power and greater bandwidth support. Secondly, the fund investment in the stable technical platform is conducive to enhancing the company’s chip design capability under diversified technical platforms. Moreover, the company can leverage the funds to lay out processor R&D for emerging scenarios markets in advance to seize development opportunities.

The company is paying attention to the field of intelligent chips, with its main business covering the R&D, design and sales of artificial intelligence core chips applied to various cloud servers, edge computing devices and end devices, providing customers with various chip products and system software solutions.

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Based on the company’s fourth-generation intelligent processor microarchitecture MLUarch03, the reasoning-training integrated MLU370 series smart chips and accelerator cards have now been launched. Their measured performance and energy efficiency is better than that of competitive products. The company’s MLU220 series smart chips and accelerator cards have been widely used in many head enterprises, with cumulative sales exceeding one million units.

In addition, the company has carried out systematic intellectual property layout in smart chip industry and related fields to protect its self-developed core technologies. As of December 31, 2021, there had been 2,526 patents applied for and 573 patents authorized to the company. In addition, it owns 58 software copyrights and six integrated circuit layout designs.