Haawking Technology Closes Pre-B+ Round to Accelerate RISC-V DSP Chip Innovation and Adoption | Unity Ventures Portfolio News
From DSP core to algorithms, fully self-developed; multiple models in mass production and delivery.
Unity Ventures portfolio company Haawking (中科昊芯) has announced the completion of its Pre-B+ funding round, led by Huajin Capital with participation from Megmeet and other investors.
Haawking focuses on the DSP赛道, with fully self-developed cores and algorithms. It is the world's first company to design, develop, and mass-produce digital signal processors using the open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture. To date, more than ten chips in its Haawking-HX2000 series have taped out, with multiple models in mass production and annual shipments approaching ten million units.
Unity Ventures portfolio company Haawking (中科昊芯) has announced the completion of its Pre-B+ funding round, led by Huajin Capital with participation from Megmeet and other investors. The proceeds will be used primarily for new product promotion and customer expansion.
Haawking has raised cumulative funding exceeding several hundred million yuan. Previous investors include HSG, Unity Ventures, Megmeet, BYD, Skyworth Group Investment, GoodWe, Ginlong, Solis, and Lanhai Huateng, among other notable companies and institutions.
Haawking's founding team comprises core researchers from the former National Engineering Research Center of Application Specific Integrated Circuit System Design. Since 2007, they have been developing core processors for national strategic applications, and formally incorporated in January 2019. It is a Chinese Academy of Sciences technology commercialization enterprise and has been designated a national-level "Little Giant"专精特新 company.
Haawking focuses on the DSP赛道 and is the world's first company to design, develop, and mass-produce digital signal processors using the open-source RISC-V instruction set architecture.
The DSP market is currently dominated by American companies such as TI and ADI, with domestic Chinese companies holding low market share and still in the early stages of development. Li Renwei, Haawking's founder, chairman, and CEO, believes that "DSP chip development has been relatively closed off. The existing instruction set architectures are not available for licensing, so domestic companies previously lacked viable technical paths to pursue."
As a high-quality, open-standard processor instruction set architecture, RISC-V is applicable to all computing systems. The mainstream x86 architecture is controlled by Intel and AMD, while companies in China seeking to use the ARM architecture must obtain licenses — a situation that, over time, hinders technological renewal and product iteration, restricting the domestic application ecosystem for operating systems and software coordination. Li Renwei told Hard Kr, "Haawking's adoption of the RISC-V instruction set addresses two critical issues: independent intellectual property rights and application ecosystem development, providing a self-controllable path for domestic processor design."
Haawking's DSP cores and algorithms are fully self-developed. Its Haawking-HX2000 series — the world's first RISC-V-based DSP — is designed for high real-time applications including industrial automation, photovoltaic energy storage, and digital power supplies. The portfolio covers automotive-grade DSP, high-performance DSP, mainstream DSP, and cost-effective DSP, with applications in industrial control and motor drives, digital power supplies, photovoltaics, energy storage, new energy vehicles, consumer electronics, and white goods. Automotive-grade DSPs demand higher reliability; the company has incorporated multiple safety mechanisms and verification methods in product design and rigorously screens its supply chain. Its products have already entered the supply chains of leading domestic automakers.
To date, more than ten chips in the Haawking-HX2000 series have taped out, with multiple models in mass production and annual shipments approaching ten million units. Haawking has also launched the Haawking IDE, Haawking-Downloader programming tool, and HXLink series emulators to optimize the integrated development environment — all now in large-scale commercial use.
For different scenarios such as new energy vehicles, humanoid robots, and photovoltaic energy storage, Haawking analyzes the algorithmic characteristics of each application, extracts corresponding DSP instructions, and combines them with the foundational RISC-V instruction set to form Haawking's proprietary RISC-V DSP instruction set — enabling rapid product deployment.
Li Renwei notes, "The defining characteristic of DSP products is computing power. Haawking's DSP chip architecture has been optimized to deliver better performance and stronger computing power at the same clock frequency. Second, application algorithms vary across industries; we extract scenario-specific acceleration instructions to improve response speed. Haawking has also built a rich algorithm library to support engineers in development and optimization."
On the team front, founder Li Renwei holds a Ph.D. in computer application technology from the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences and has led or participated in multiple national-level major research projects. Team members come from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, HiSilicon, NXP, STMicroelectronics, and UNISOC, among other renowned institutions and companies, with over ten years of experience in chip design, quality control, production operations, sales, and technical support. The company has nearly 100 employees, with R&D personnel accounting for over 60% of the workforce. Total R&D investment has accumulated to several hundred million yuan.
This year's tariff policy changes have been felt most acutely by companies in the thick of it. Li Renwei notes that these policy shifts have accelerated the domestic substitution process, representing a growth opportunity for the company. The key challenges in developing domestic DSP chips lie in building out the RISC-V ecosystem and achieving market acceptance. Getting products into fields with higher safety and reliability requirements will take more time. Going forward, Haawking will continue to improve the RISC-V ecosystem and application-layer (software and hardware) ecosystem, working to build an open-source ecosystem for independently developed digital signal processors.
Source: Hard Kr
Author: Wu Ruoyu
Editor: Peng Xiaoqiu
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