The first round of valuation has surged to 13 billion yuan! Another chip unicorn has emerged in Beijing.
Kunlun Tech, a Beijing-based chip technology company that was previously part of Baidu, has recently undergone a business registration change which includes the emergence of new investor BYD.
Kunlun Tech was valued at approximately RMB 13 billion in its first round of financing after being spun off from Baidu's Intelligent Chip and Architecture Division. Since then, the company has garnered investments from a number of well-known firms such as CPE Source Peak, IDG Capital, Junlian Capital, Yuanhe Partners, Lindong Investment, Haifu Industry Fund, GM Ventures, and Qianshan Capital.
The company is poised to become one of the latest rising stars in the chip industry in Zhongguancun, a technology hub in Beijing. While Zhongguancun has traditionally been known for internet-related companies, it is now also emerging as a hub for the chip industry.
Kunlun Xing (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., which was formerly the intelligent chip and architecture division of Baidu
has recently undergone a change in business registration to include a new investor - BYD. This development marks a partnership between BYD and Baidu's founder, Robin Li, who has previously collaborated on the development of autonomous driving technology.
The Kunlun Xing chip division was founded in 2011 and has since made significant progress in developing AI acceleration technology. In 2018, Baidu unveiled the Kunlun chip, which was designed for AI applications and boasted impressive specifications, including 260 Tops of computing power. The company's second generation of chips was released in August 2021 and is designed for various applications, including cloud, edge, and terminal scenarios.
Kunlun Xing's chips have been deployed in numerous industries, including search engines, smart industries, and transportation. The company has achieved significant commercial success, with the second generation of Kunlun chips generating billions of yuan in revenue.
In 2021, Kunlun Chip 2.0 was launched, which supports various types of algorithms such as NLP, vision, and voice, and can complete both training and inference. By the end of 2022, Ouyang Jian, the CEO of Kunlun Chip, stated that Kunlun Chip 2.0 had already shipped tens of thousands of pieces and achieved billion-level commercial revenue.
Currently, the first generation of Kunlun Chips has been deployed in over 20,000 units in Baidu's search engine, Xiao Du, and other businesses. The second generation of Kunlun Chips, with its self-developed XPU architecture, is suitable for multiple scenarios such as cloud, edge, and endpoint, and has been deployed on a large scale in the internet, smart industry, and intelligent transportation fields.
In 2020, Baidu CTO revealed that Kunlun chip had already produced more than 20,000 pieces and deployed in applications. In 2021, Baidu's intelligent chip and architecture department spun off from Baidu and established Kunlun Xinyu Technology in Beijing, with Baidu's chief chip architect Ouyang Jian as the CEO. Ouyang Jian graduated from the Department of Electronic Engineering at Beihang University and received his master's degree from the University of Science and Technology of China. He is one of the earliest engineers in China to participate in heterogeneous computing and hardware computing acceleration projects and is proficient in various computer system architectures.
In August 2021, the second generation of Kunlun chip was launched, supporting various types of algorithms such as NLP, vision, and speech, and capable of both training and inference. By the end of 2022, Ouyang Jian pointed out that the second-generation Kunlun chip had shipped tens of thousands of pieces and achieved billion-level commercial revenue.
Currently, Kunlun Xinyu's first-generation chip has been deployed in more than 20,000 pieces in Baidu's search engine, Xiaodu, and other businesses, and the second-generation Kunlun chip, which is equipped with a self-developed XPU architecture, has achieved mass deployment in the fields of the Internet, intelligent industry, and intelligent transportation, and is suitable for various scenarios such as cloud, edge, and terminal.
In August 2021, Kunlun Chip 2.0 was launched, supporting various types of algorithms such as NLP, vision, and speech, and can handle both training and inference. By the end of 2022, Ouyang Jian stated that Kunlun Chip 2.0 had already shipped tens of thousands of chips and achieved billions of dollars in commercial revenue. Currently, Kunlun Chip 1.0 has been deployed in more than 20,000 pieces in Baidu search engine, XiaoDu, and other businesses, and Kunlun Chip 2.0 was mass-produced in August 2021, using the self-developed 2nd generation XPU architecture, suitable for various scenarios such as cloud, edge, and end, and has been deployed on a large scale in Internet, intelligent industry, smart transportation, and other fields.
