BlueRun Ventures Continues to Double Down: Nuclei System Technology Announces New Funding Round of Several Hundred Million Yuan | BlueRun Ventures
Accelerating a series of moves in the RISC-V space
Recently, Nuclei System Technology announced the completion of a new round of financing worth hundreds of millions of RMB. This round was led by Legend Capital, with follow-on investments from Xianghui Capital, Shougang Fund, C&D Emerging Investment, Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Fund, Jingque Capital, Tiantang Silicon Valley, and Chengye Investment. Existing shareholder BlueRun Ventures, CETC Core Technology Research and Investment Fund, Linxi Investment, Zhongguancun Xinchuang Fund, and Xiaomi Changjiang Industrial Investment Fund also continued to invest. This financing brings Nuclei a richer industrial application ecosystem and implementation capabilities, which will assist the company in building new directions for RISC-V-based innovation and development.
Previously, BlueRun Ventures was an investor in Nuclei's Pre-A, Series A, and subsequent rounds.
Jui Chan, Managing Partner of BlueRun Ventures, stated: Under the major trends in AIoT and the shifts in underlying architecture, the RISC-V architecture has demonstrated strong latecomer advantages and ecosystem and commercialization progress that exceed expectations. As an early investor in Nuclei, BlueRun has witnessed and accompanied the Nuclei team from scratch, step by step building a highly competitive RISC-V CPU IP product matrix in the industry, an innovative full-stack SOC IP platform, and an increasingly comprehensive ecosystem toolchain. We continue to be optimistic about and support the Nuclei team, which can continuously contribute important strength to promoting the development of domestic semiconductor industry foundational technology and the RISC-V ecosystem.
Founded in 2018, Nuclei System Technology is one of the first domestic companies to build an application ecosystem based on the RISC-V open instruction set architecture and to achieve industrialization. Starting from scratch, with self-developed RISC-V-based CPU technology as its source, the company has already released multiple series of RISC-V CPU IP products and related solutions.
While maintaining rapid business and revenue growth, Nuclei has formed a virtuous cycle of technology and team development, successively securing heavyweight industry clients and landmark application cases, with over 100 clients formally licensing Nuclei products.
Prior to this financing round, Nuclei continuously promoted the domestic application and implementation of RISC-V CPU IP, with its full product series having matured and stably entered mass production designs for numerous clients. Particularly after the launch of its high-performance 900 multi-core series and parallel computing VPU core, clients have been continuously pushing Nuclei products into higher-level complex applications.
At the same time, CPU IP products with Security and Functional Safety (automotive-grade) features are also being systematically implemented, having entered client integration verification and standard certification stages.
Nuclei's proprietary software support system has maintained rapid iteration, continuously improving user service experience, providing more complete toolchains, SDKs, and operating system support, and promoting the deployment of more application libraries and solutions on Nuclei CPU IP, particularly on high-performance product lines.
On another front, Nuclei's innovative full-stack subsystem IP platform based on RISC-V CPU IP has become increasingly comprehensive. Through close technical cooperation with ecosystem partners, it has greatly shortened the SoC project design cycle for users based on RISC-V CPU IP.
The funds raised in this round will mainly be used to accelerate Nuclei's series of deployments in the RISC-V field:
- Further R&D of higher-performance CPU IP and new features for security, automotive, and intelligence applications, to meet differentiated needs in the AIoT and automotive electronics tracks;
- Promotion of agile design technology platform iteration, more conveniently outputting RISC-V-based hardware-software integrated solutions;
- Conducting technical verification of hardcore IP based on Chiplet interconnects, more openly participating in heterogeneous system demand planning for RISC-V.
Nuclei founder Hu Zhenbo stated: "Currently, the global semiconductor IP industry market is still mainly dominated by foreign giants. Foundational IP technology, particularly key core IP represented by CPU IP, has long been one of the fatal weaknesses of the domestic semiconductor industry. Nuclei chose to enter from the foundational IP segment, has passed through its three-year startup phase, initially established a complete RISC-V CPU IP product line, completed core technology accumulation and key team building, and found a sustainable development path in the RISC-V open ecosystem through technology and business model innovation. Our investment partners will leverage their own industry advantages to bring new resources to Nuclei, which also demonstrates that Nuclei's business model and development path have gained recognition from both within and outside the industry. In the next three years, the Nuclei team will continue to increase R&D investment, further accelerate industrialization implementation, and gradually evolve from an IP supplier to a technology platform outputting solutions, contributing our part to filling the gaps in foundational technology segments of the domestic semiconductor industry."
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RISC-V Leader Nuclei System Technology Completes New Financing Round, BlueRun Ventures Continues to Invest
BlueRun Ventures was established in Silicon Valley in 1998. BlueRun Ventures China was established in 2005 and is a venture capital firm focused on early-stage startups.
Currently, BlueRun Ventures China manages multiple USD and RMB dual-currency funds, with assets under management exceeding 15 billion RMB, making it one of the largest early-stage funds in China. Its investment stage focuses on Pre-A and Series A, covering hard technology and innovative interaction, enterprise technology, new consumer, and healthcare sectors. It has cumulatively invested in over 150 startups, including Li Auto, Waterdrop, QingCloud, Guazi.com, Qudian, Songguo Mobility, Ganji.com, Energy Monster, Yuntu Semiconductor, Machenike, Yunsheng Intelligence, Anxin Wangdun, and BioMap.
BlueRun Ventures has been ranked first in Zero2IPO's "China Top 30 Early-Stage Investment Institutions" and ChinaVenture's "China Best Early-Stage Venture Capital Institutions TOP30," and has been named among Preqin's Top 10 global venture capital fund managers with consistently high returns.
Additionally, BlueRun Ventures has for multiple consecutive years received honors from Forbes China, 36Kr, Cyzone, Caixin Media, CBNweekly, Jiemian, and other media organizations, including "China Best Early-Stage Institution of the Year," "China Top Venture Capital Institution," "Most Entrepreneur-Friendly Early-Stage Institution of the Year," and "Most Influential Early-Stage Institution of the Year."