Nanjing-based automotive chip designer SemiDrive said on Monday that it has completed Series C+ and C++ funding rounds, bringing its total Series C fundraising in 2026 to roughly 1 billion yuan, or about $148 million. The latest tranches drew backing from Walden International and several Shaanxi state-affiliated investment funds, alongside other financial and strategic investors. The announcement comes on top of a nearly $100 million Series C close in May.
Only a handful of chip design houses worldwide offer both automotive-grade system-on-chips and high-performance MCUs, and SemiDrive is one of them. Its portfolio spans the X9 smart cockpit chip, V9 smart driving chip, G9 central gateway chip, and E3 high-performance MCU. Cumulative shipments have climbed past 14 million units, up from 12 million as of May, and its chips reach more than 90 percent of China's automakers — SAIC, Chery, Changan, Dongfeng, FAW, and Li Auto among them — as well as international players such as Nissan, Honda, and Volkswagen.
Investor Walden International credits the company with the leading domestic market share in both smart cockpit chips and vehicle control MCUs. The fresh capital will mainly fund R&D on core technologies and their commercialization, while SemiDrive also pushes into embodied AI, where its chips already power mass-produced products built around a "brain, cerebellum, torso and joints" architecture.