By Gabby Chen

China's equity investment in semiconductors jumped 25% year on year, with a total of 497 funding projects during January-November 2022, involving an estimated total of nearly RMB91 billion ($13.04 billion). This is one of the key findings in JW Insights' 2022 China Semiconductor Equity Investment Development Report.

Wang Yanli, senior analyst of JW Insights consulting division, gave the report at the 2023 China Semiconductor Alliance (CSIA) Annual Meeting and China IC Top Award Ceremony held in Hefei, eastern China's Anhui Province on December 17.

With the impact of rising global inflation and weak market demand, the global semiconductor market in 2022 saw a fluctuation from high to low, said Wang.

In 2022 (December 2021-November 2022), the number and amount of China's financing cases experienced a trend of strengthening in Q1, hitting bottom in Q2, recovering in Q3, and dropping again in Q4.

The IC design industry remains the focus of investments in 2022. Materials and equipment's popularity increased significantly. The IC design attracted 232 funding cases, reaching 43% of the total; Among them, 75 involved analog design, 32% of the total.

Compared with 2021, there are more attention to semiconductor materials, optoelectronic devices, third-generation semiconductors, discrete devices, and radar. Attention to design, equipment and packaging, and testing fields remained the same as last year, but less to sensors and EDA/IP.

Analog chips, semiconductor materials, logic chips, and equipment became the most favorable sectors for investors in 2022, accounting for about 45% of all financing.

The number of funding projects for each sector exceeded 50.

In terms of applications, the intelligent sensing, automobile, and data center related business won extra attention from VC in 2022.

For the forecast in 2023, the report noted that investment in materials, equipment, and components that are involved in breaking away from US sanctions are expected to have prosperous return value.

At the same time, the third-generation semiconductor, intelligent cockpit/driving chips, automotive-grade MCU, arithmetic chips, high-end memory driven by new EVs and data center market will also become the targets of investors.