Wi-Fi Chip Firm Zunpai Completes Several Hundred Million Yuan in Pre-A Investment Round

Zunpai Communication Technology (Nanjing) Co., Ltd., a Chinese wireless communication chip company, announced on Monday that it has obtained several hundred million yuan in a pre-A round of financing. The investors were well-known financial investment institutions such as Xiaomi, Allin Capital, FutureX Capital, Vision Knight Capital, Haiwang Capital under Shanghai STVC Group, Hangzhou Anysoft Information Technology Co., Ltd., and other industrial investors.

Previously, Zunpai completed angel investment of nearly 100 million yuan ($14.86 million) with Gaorong Capital as the lead investor and Jiangbei Jiakang Technology as co-investor in May 2021. Gaorong Capital continued its investment in the most recent round. These funds are reportedly intended mainly for R&D, testing, market expansion and corporate operations.

Zunpai was established in March 2021. It is committed to providing high-performance, eco-intelligent scenario chipsets and solutions for families and enterprises. Currently, it is developing Wi-Fi 6 router chips and complete solutions at full speed. The company is headquartered in the eastern Chinese city of Nanjing, and its global R&D center is located in Zhang Jiang High-Tech Park, Shanghai. It also has offices in Shenzhen and Beijing.

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AP chips within Wi-Fi network hubs are equivalent to the base station of cellular networks, and have extremely high barriers for R&D. Its manufacturers are mainly from the US and Taiwan. Despite this, Zunpai recently obtained the RFIC film that was cast at the end of 2021 and successfully executed it. The company will mass produce chips for Wi-Fi 6 routers by the end of this year or early next year. In the process, the chips adopt the 28nm process.

According to data from Gartner, 4.4 billion Wi-Fi chips were shipped worldwide in 2020, and the number is expected to reach 4.9 billion in 2022. In this market segment, according to data collected for the semiconductor industry, the market size of router/gateway Wi-Fi 6 chips in China was about 300 million yuan in 2019 and is expected to soar to 4.5 billion yuan in 2023.