(Yicai) July 18 -- Sunrise, the chip developer spun off from Chinese artificial intelligence giant SenseTime, has raised CNY1 billion (USD139 million) to fund faster product development, market expansion, and team growth, with the goal of driving down AI inference costs.

Huaxu Capital, a unit of construction machinery giant Sany Group, AI unicorn 4Paradigm, game developer Yoozoo Interactive, and other investors participated in the Series A funding round, the Hangzhou-based company announced today.

Formerly SenseTime’s chip division, Sunrise was spun off late last year. The startup is working on high-performance graphics processing unit, including AI computing chips, and has a core team of 150 engineers, who mostly came from SenseTime, Advanced Micro Devices, Baidu, and Alibaba Group Holding, it said.

Sunrise is already mass-producing its first two GPU chips, the S1 and S2. The S3, tailored for multimodal AI inference, is expected to enter mass production next year. The company said the chip’s new architecture will cut AI inference costs to one-tenth, bolstering China’s AI sector.

China has ramped up efforts to develop its own GPU chips in response to US export restrictions on advanced semiconductors. Last month, leading Chinese GPU makers Moore Threads and MetaX filed for listings on Shanghai’s Nasdaq-style Star Market, aiming to raise CNY8 billion (USD1.1 billion) and CNY3.9 billion (USD543 million), respectively.

Editor: Emmi Laine