On 16 Feb, Shanghai-based SiC chip startup InventChip Technology announced today that it has closed a strategic financing round with exclusive participation from XPeng, just four months after its last funding round.
This investment will be used by InventChip for
- market development,
- supplementing R&D and working capital,
- bringing in talented people,
- InventChip did not disclose the exact amount of the financing.
With the rapid rise in sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs), the use of SiC in components including electric drives, OBCs, and charging piles will bring a broader market for the technology, said XPeng Vice President Zhang Xiaofeng.
Who is InventChip?
InventChip is the first company in China that is able to develop and master 6-inch SiC MOSFET products and process platforms in-house.
Founded in 2017 in Shanghai Lingang, InventChip is dedicated to developing
- SiC power devices
- drive
- control chips
- SiC power module products.
On September 11, 2020, InventChip’s silicon carbide 1200V 80mohm MOSFET products with fully independent intellectual property rights passed JEDEC certification.
This makes it one of the mainstream local makers of industrial-grade SiC MOSFET power devices, the company said.
In October 2020, the company closed RMB hundreds of millions in Series A+ and Series A++ financing from investors including Lightspeed China Partners and Hubei Xiaomi Changjiang Industry Fund.
Currently, InventChip has shipped more than 400,000 of its in-house developed SiC MOSFETs.
How would XPeng benefit?
The XPeng G9 is China’s first production vehicle based on the 800V high-voltage SiC platform and can get a range of more than 200 kilometres on a five-minute charge, the company said at the time.
It is worth noting that the XPeng G9 is not the first vehicle to use SiC chips.
Mainstream car makers still use IGBTs (insulated gate bipolar transistor chips), but Tesla and BYD have already started using SiC MOSFETs in their Model 3 and Han EV models.
For more information about technology used in XPeng, see also:
