China’s state chip fund makes $2 billion investment in Anhui-based chip firm

China’s state-backed “Big Fund” for chip-making has invested RMB 14.56 billion ($1.99 billion) in domestic memory chip company Changxin Xinqiao, one of its largest investments in recent years. The investment accounts for 33.15% of Changxin Xinqiao’s registered capital according to the National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System (NECIPS). Changxin Xinqiao, founded two years ago in Anhui province, has applied to build a manufacturing base for 12-inch memory wafers, as stated in the NECIPS database. Earlier this year, the Big Fund spent RMB 13 billion ($1.78 billion) on Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC), China’s only player in the global NAND (a type of non-volatile storage technology) memory market. In 2022, the US government blacklisted YMTC due to concerns that the company might redirect US chip technology to Huawei. [Reuters]