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Sunrise Raises $139 Million in Pre-A Round as China Ramps Up GPU Independence Push
Tai Mei Ti A P P· 2025-07-21 01:32
Core Insights - Sunrise, a domestic AI chipmaker spun off from SenseTime, has raised nearly $139 million in a Pre-A funding round as China focuses on localizing high-performance GPU supply chains [2][3] Company Overview - Sunrise was established at the end of 2024 and has quickly become a full-stack developer of high-performance GPUs and multimodal inference chips [4] - The company is led by Chairman Xu Bing, co-founders Wang Zhan and Wang Yong, who have extensive backgrounds in tech companies like Baidu and AMD [4][5] Funding and Investment - The recent funding round was supported by a consortium of investors including Huaxu Fund, 4Paradigm, and others, aimed at accelerating R&D and expanding market operations [3] - Sunrise's funding success indicates a growing investor interest in domestic GPU companies amid geopolitical and supply chain challenges [12] Product Development - Sunrise's product roadmap includes the S1 vision inference chip for cloud-edge video analysis, with over 20,000 units shipped, and the S2 general-purpose GPU, which has entered mass production [6][7] - The upcoming S3 chip, expected in 2026, aims to reduce inference costs by up to 90% [7] Financial Performance - Despite the funding, Sunrise has not yet reached profitability, reporting revenue of $33,520 in 2024 and a net loss of $26.47 million [11] - As of March, total assets were reported at $13.13 million, with net assets of $11.72 million [11] Strategic Positioning - Sunrise is positioned as the flagship of SenseTime's chip ambitions following a reorganization under a "1+X" strategy, which focuses on generative AI while spinning off other units [9] - The company's broader strategy includes hardware accelerators, large model servers, and compute clusters, targeting sectors like intelligent computing, financial services, and smart manufacturing [8]