Chinese AI chipmaker Iluvatar CoreX raises several hundred million RMB in Series B round

Nanjing-headquartered artificial intelligence chipmaker Iluvatar CoreX said Thursday that it has closed its Series B round, bagging hundreds of millions RMB, although without disclosing the exact sum of funding, according to Chinese media outlet PEdaily.

Chinese private equity firm Centurium Capital, which is the major investor behind Luckin Coffee, and San Francisco and Hong Kong-based Princeville Capital, which once backed Alibaba, Baidu, Xiaomi and Facebook, led this round.

The new funds will be used in R&D, market expansion and mass-production.

Iluvatar CoreX was founded at the end of 2015 by Li Yunpeng, who served Oracle for ten years. The startup features a series of in-house chip products called Big Island and Treasure Island, and also boasts a machine learning platform called SkyDiscovery.

China’s chipmaking industry is speeding up to meet the country’s hope to have its own homegrown core technologies.

Alibaba’s chip subsidiary Pingtouge (honey badger in English) launched its own processor called Xuantie 910 in late July, only months after its foundation.