Xinyi Information Technology Raises Tens of Millions of RMB in Series A Funding | FreeS Fund Investment News

" Investor's Note

Li Feng, Founding Partner, FreeS Fund

Email: feng@freesvc.com

We met with the Xinyi Information Technology team once and decided to invest on the spot. That said, getting from term sheet to close had its bumps. During that stretch, founder Jianhong Xiao went through some rough moments as a founder. We told him: we're investing in you as a person. As long as you keep at it, we're in.

A big reason was his background, experience, and track record — particularly what he accomplished as a senior principal scientist at Broadcom in the U.S. Jianhong is a founder worth respecting, a seasoned entrepreneur. We also admired that after hitting difficulties, he still held to his original vision and stayed unwavering about where he wanted to go.

In the year after our angel investment in Xinyi, the company raised two more rounds, from both strategic and financial investors. Congratulations to Xinyi on its progress this past year. Looking at the results, even more congratulations are due for producing the world's lowest-power, highest-integration NB-IoT chip. We believe they have enormous potential in the broader IoT direction.

"

NB-IoT Chip Startup Xinyi Information Technology Raises Tens of Millions of RMB in Series A, Starting from Smart IoT Niche Scenarios

Source: 36Kr

Author: Yin Zheng

IoT communication chip provider Xinyi Information Technology recently closed a Series A round of tens of millions of RMB. Investors include Bangsheng Capital, Qianhai Equity Investment FOF, Septwolves, Dongfang Jiafu, CEC, and others. The proceeds will go toward new product R&D and team expansion. Previously, the company raised a Pre-A round from Goldcard Smart, and an angel round from FreeS Fund, Pudu Technology, and CASSTAR.

In recent years, as IoT technology has advanced, existing connectivity technologies have struggled to keep pace with the growing number of IoT devices. This has raised industry attention on Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN). Narrow Band Internet of Things (NB-IoT), a key technology within LPWAN, has drawn significant domestic interest due to its low power consumption, stable connectivity, and low cost.

With NB-IoT deployment in sight, major players like Huawei and Qualcomm have entered the chip market. However, large companies generally focus on general-purpose chips, leaving the massive fragmentation of IoT scenarios unaddressed — an opening that creates opportunities for startups like Xinyi Information Technology.

Dr. Jianhong Xiao, founder of Xinyi Information Technology, said the company is currently targeting smart metering, smart cities (smoke detection, fire safety, street lighting, environmental monitoring, and similar applications), and related verticals. In smart metering, for example, through partnership with industry leader Goldcard Smart, Xinyi can embed NB-IoT chip modules into gas meters, solving the slow transmission and high energy consumption problems of traditional remote-read gas meters.

Xinyi's NB-IoT chip supports multiple power modes (deep sleep, light sleep, standby, and low-power active). In deep sleep and receiver states, current draw is one-third that of commercially available chips on the market. The chip also features high integration: it incorporates an RF PA, solving the problem of high-power transmission interfering with other on-chip circuits, which reduces development difficulty and cost for module manufacturers. Flexibility comes from its SDR architecture, which can support NB-type, LoRa-type, and other custom communication technologies to meet fragmented market demands.

On the business model front, Xinyi Information Technology primarily provides NB-IoT chips and supporting IoT communication technology services to enterprise customers. The company sells products through traditional module vendors and distributors, while also pursuing strategic partnerships with traditional manufacturing industries to help them become smart and IoT-enabled from angles like power reduction.

Regarding market expansion, Xiao said Xinyi Information Technology has strategic partnerships with module and solution vendors not only domestically but also in international markets such as Japan. The company will also select additional terminal device manufacturers and explore more scenarios going forward.

Xinyi Information Technology completed tape-out at the end of January this year, received chips back in April, and officially unveiled samples at MWC Shanghai in late June. Xiao said chip shipments are expected to begin next year, with sales potentially reaching millions of units.

Founded in March 2017, Xinyi Information Technology's core team comes from well-known chip companies including Broadcom, Qualcomm, Max Linear, and Huawei, with an average of more than ten years of industry experience. Founder and CEO Jianhong Xiao received his undergraduate degree from Peking University and his Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in the U.S. He previously served as senior principal scientist at Broadcom and led R&D for broadband RF transceivers, holding five U.S. patents.

With the end of Moore's Law and the arrival of the intelligent IoT era, scenarios and demands such as AI training, inference, cloud computing, edge computing, and intelligent driving have proliferated. Vertical niche scenarios are the entry point for most NB-IoT companies. The smart metering industry that Xinyi Information Technology is targeting can cover roughly 60–70 million chips at the endpoint annually; if the company succeeds in landing there, the scale would be considerable. The company is also considering expanding into smart building scenarios in the future to reach more endpoints.

(This article originally appeared on 36Kr. Feel free to share to Moments.)

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