China’s National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Limited will acquire a 10.526% stake in the equity of Apex Microelectronics.
Ninestar Corporation (Ninestar) has announced that their wholly-owned subsidiary Zhuhai Apex Microelectronics Co., Ltd. (Apex) has received an investment from the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Limited (China IC Fund) who intends to increase the capital of RMB 200 million to Apex and will acquire a 10.526%, valuing Apex at RMB 19 billion (€2.4 billion / $2.9 billion). Ninestar will retain 83% of the Apex shares.
The CICIIF is a State-owned fund set up in 2014 to support the value chain of the integrated circuit industry, which involves chip design, production, packaging and testing.
The fund invests in selected companies operating in semiconductors and related industries to develop China’s integrated circuit industry ecosystem and explore potential business opportunities in the sector.
Apex is the leading producer of chips for the printer market. From their four R&D centres in Zhuhai, Hangzhou, Shanghai and the United States, the company’s ongoing developments focus on security chip technology, CPU Design technology, multi-core SoC design technology and compatible chip design technology and other core technologies.
Apex Microelectronics’ SoC/MCU chip shipments based on domestic embedded CPUs exceeded 500 million chips, it is the largest chip supplier based on domestically produced CPUs, and related products have won the “China Core” best eight times.
