Nexchip

Chinese semiconductor foundry

Nexchip Semiconductor Corporation

Native name	合肥晶合集成电路股份有限公司
Company type	Public; State-owned enterprise
Traded as	SSE: 688072
Industry	Semiconductors
Founded	May 19, 2015; 8 years ago (2015-05-19)
Founder	Tsai Kuo-Chih "Michael"
Headquarters	Hefei, Anhui, China
Key people	Tsai Kuo-Chih "Michael" (Chairman) Tsai Hui-Chia (CEO)
Revenue	CN¥10.03 billion (2022)
Net income	CN¥3.05 billion (2022)
Total assets	CN¥38.77 billion (2022)
Total equity	CN¥18.05 billion (2022)
Owner	Powerchip (20.58%)
Number of employees	4,224
Website	www.nexchip.com.cn
Footnotes / references ^[1]

Nexchip (Chinese: 晶合集成; pinyin: Jīnghé Jíchéng) is a partially state-owned publicly listed Chinese pure-play semiconductor foundry company based in Hefei, Anhui.

In terms of revenue, it is currently mainland China's third largest semiconductor foundry behind SMIC and Hua Hong Semiconductor. It is also one of the largest semiconductor foundries in the world based on the same metric.^[2]^[3]^[4]

Background

In May 2015, Nexchip was originally established as a joint venture between Taiwanese company Powerchip and the Hefei City Construction and Investment Holding Group, a state-owned enterprise. Its founder, Michael Tsai had previously served as President of Powerchip and had also held senior position at other Taiwanese technology companies. According to Tsai, Nexchip was founded on the advantages of the local industrial supply chain, driven by BOE Technology to become the world's leading Display Driver ICs (DDI) chip foundry.^[2]^[3]^[5]

In response to the United States New Export Controls on Advanced Computing and Semiconductors to China, anonymous sources have reported that Nexchip was purchasing everything it could including second-hand tools to keep its fabs running.^[6]

On 5 May 2023, Nexchip held its initial public offering becoming a listed company on the Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market. The offering was 1,160x oversubscribed due to popular demand and raised 9.96 billion yuan making it one of the largest IPOs in 2023.^[2]^[3]^[7]

In October 2023, Nexchips opened a new fab in Hefei that specialized in manufacturing car chips. As China's leading DDI foundry, it wanted to expand into to the automotive power chip market. According to Nexchip, overconcentration on the DDI sector was a potential risk due to order fluctuation and bargaining power. Therefore, it wanted to diversify into other areas. Its five largest customers accounted for 66.47% of sales.^[3]^[5]

As of 2023, Nexchip has achieved mass production for 12-inch wafer foundry platforms of the 90nm to 150 nm process nodes. It is now in the risk-taking phase of mass production of 55 nm nodes Apart from the DDI sector, Nexchip is also involved in microcontrollers, CMOS Image sensors and Power Management ICs. Nexchip's 2023 half-year report showed DDI accounted for 87.84% of sales and its process nodes with the most sales were the 90 nm platform followed by the 110 nm platform.^[3]^[5]

References

^ "688249.CN | Nexchip Semiconductor Corp. A Company Profile & Executives - WSJ". www.wsj.com. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 29 March 2024.
^ ^a ^b ^c Lu, Misha (4 January 2024). "Arm, United Nova Technology and Nexchip joined the rank of the world's top 100 highest-valued chip companies in 2023". DIGITIMES. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 29 March 2024.
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Gao, Greg (5 May 2023). "Chinese chip foundry Nexchip Semiconductor makes a strong debut on Shanghai Stock Exchange STAR Market with a nearly RMB40 billion ($5.78 billion) market cap". jw.ijiwei.com. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 29 March 2024.
^ 谭欣雨. "Mainland chipmakers among world's top 10". global.chinadaily.com.cn. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 29 March 2024.
^ ^a ^b ^c Shen, Jessie (31 October 2023). "Chinese foundry gearing up for automotive IC boom". DIGITIMES. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 29 March 2024.
^ Shilov, Anton (3 February 2023). "China Backdoors US Chip Sanctions, Buys Used Banned Equipment". Tom's Hardware. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 29 March 2024.
^ Tian, Karen (28 April 2023). "China's IPO investors chip in | IFR". IFRe. Archived from the original on 29 March 2024. Retrieved 29 March 2024.