Chinese automotive chipmaker SemiDrive has closed Series C+ and C++ rounds worth roughly 1 billion yuan ($148 million) combined, lifting its total Series C financing in 2026 to about that figure on top of a near-$100 million Series C completed in May.

The Nanjing-based company disclosed the rounds in a statement on Monday. Investors included Walden International, Shaanxi Investment Fund, Shaanxi Financial Asset Management and Shaanxi New Era Capital, alongside other financial and strategic backers.

The fresh capital will primarily fund research and development of core technologies and their commercialization. SemiDrive plans to reinforce its position in smart cockpit and vehicle control chips while extending its automotive-grade capabilities into embodied AI and other smart devices.

14 million chips shipped

The volume number anchors the story. Cumulative shipments across SemiDrive's automotive chip lineup have exceeded 14 million units, up from 12 million in May — 2 million units shipped in roughly half a year. The company says its products now reach more than 90% of Chinese automakers plus some international manufacturers.

The customer list spans domestic OEMs and global players with China operations: SAIC Motor (SSE: 600104), Chery (HKEX: 9973), Changan Automobile (SZSE: 000625), Dongfeng, FAW, Nissan, Honda, Volkswagen and Li Auto (NASDAQ: LI).

SemiDrive belongs to a small group of chip designers worldwide offering both automotive-grade system-on-chips and high-performance microcontroller units. Its product line maps cleanly onto vehicle domains: the X9 smart cockpit chip, the V9 smart driving chip, the G9 central gateway chip and the E3 high-performance MCU.

The embodied AI bet

The most strategically significant element of the announcement is where the money goes next. In embodied AI, SemiDrive says it offers a full-stack chip solution spanning what it calls the "brain, cerebellum, torso and joints" architecture, and its chips already run in mass-produced products from leading embodied AI companies. The company did not name those customers.

Walden International, a repeat investor, put a market-share claim behind the bet. SemiDrive ranks first among domestic suppliers in both smart cockpit chips and vehicle control MCUs, Walden said, and its expansion from automotive silicon into embodied AI opens up further growth opportunities. That ranking is an investor's assertion; it warrants verification against independent production and share data before being treated as settled fact.

A steady fundraising cadence

The two announcements this year continue a pattern that dates to the company's founding in 2018. SemiDrive raised 1 billion yuan in a Series B round in July 2021 and roughly the same amount in a Series B+ round in November 2022. The 2026 Series C sequence — May's near-$100 million close, now the C+ and C++ extensions — suggests investors are scaling their commitments as shipment volumes climb.

For Tier 1 suppliers and OEM electronics teams sourcing in China, SemiDrive's trajectory matters because cockpit and vehicle-control silicon is consolidating around fewer vendors with automotive-grade qualification. A designer shipping at 14 million units across more than 90% of the domestic OEM base has moved past the startup-risk threshold that procurement teams once flagged.

What to watch next: whether SemiDrive discloses named embodied AI design wins, whether cumulative shipments cross 16 million by year-end — the pace implied by its May-to-November run rate — and how the company's domestic market-share lead in cockpit SoCs and vehicle control MCUs holds up as international suppliers respond. (Exchange rate: $1 = 6.7487 yuan.)