Editing by Xin Lanhua

China's chip design startup Shanghai Eigencomm Technologies Ltd.（移芯通信）announced that it had got a C round of financing of RMB1 billion ($157.2 million) recently and will use funds in the R&D and innovation of 5G communication chips for the global market.

This investment round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2, followed by Cathay Capital, CoStone Capital, GF Qianhe, and Chobe Capital. Its shareholders like Qiming Venture Partners continued their investment.

In the four rounds of financing so far, Eigencomm Technologies’s investors include top investment institutions, leading securities companies, and government investment funds.

Located in Zhangjiang of Shanghai’s Pudong District, Eigencomm was established in February 2017 with a goal to be a world's leading cellular IoT chips supplier. Its products are widely used in smart meter, intelligent fire system, shared bicycles, asset tracking, home appliances, empowering various 5G applications.

According to the announcement, the company will try to maintain its leading IoT chip position and accelerate international development. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 will also render help with its international resources.

Eigencomm has launched two NB-IoT chips and one Cat1 bis chip. The EC616 and EC616S products of the NB-IoT series have been volume-produced and adopted by more than 1,000 terminal customers. And the Cat1 bis series chip EC618 has been successfully tapped out. The company is developing products with different communication formats and transmission rates in cellular communications and will launch 5G RedCap/eMBB chips soon.

Eigencomm is one of the few Chinese companies independently developing cellular communication chips, following the global players like Qualcomm, HiSilicon, Samsung, MTK, and UNISOC. Eigencomm says its core technologies and IPs are self-developed, including algorithm and architecture, radio-frequency, baseband, SoC, protocol stack software, platform and application software, and hardware solutions.