(Qualcomm Venture Capital Shen Jin Image source: Photo provided by the interviewee)
On January 13, 2022, Qualcomm announced that from November to December 2021, Qualcomm Venture Capital participated in the completion of strategic investments in three Chinese companies, Denglin Technology, Agile Technology and Millima Zhixing, covering three major areas of AI, IoT and autonomous driving.
Qualcomm Ventures also released its latest investment report card on the same day: it has completed investments in more than 360 companies worldwide, is managing more than 150 invested companies, and holds more than $2 billion in assets of invested companies. In the past five years, 17 of Qualcomm Ventures' portfolio companies have been listed or acquired.
Among them, Qualcomm Venture Capital has invested in more than 70 companies in China, of which more than a dozen have grown into star innovation enterprises in their respective fields.
Shen Jin, global vice president of Qualcomm and managing director of Qualcomm Ventures China, said in an interview that in China, Qualcomm Ventures' investment focus mainly focuses on four areas: AI+5G, XR+5G, robotics/autonomous driving+5G, and Internet of Things+5G.
Based on this, in the past 2021, Qualcomm Venture Capital has invested in cellular vehicle networking (C-V2X) and computer vision related solution provider Zhuoshi Zhitong; robot and AI technology company Chuangyi Technology; Shiju Network, a high-tech enterprise that provides 5G protocol stacks and O-RAN software and hardware; Gerco Micro, an image sensor chip design company, a cloud AI computing platform company with GPU+ as the core technology; and Agile Technology, which provides robot handling and picking solutions for the manufacturing and warehousing industries. As well as the ai technology company for autonomous driving, Zhixing.
Shen Jin said that in the process of building an intelligent and interconnected world, Qualcomm has found 15 key industry development trends, including 5G to enterprise network expansion, digitalization and automation of automobiles, cloud connectivity of automobiles, and XR becoming a meta-universe terminal platform. Qualcomm's technology and business are highly correlated with these 15 industry trends, and Qualcomm is at the intersection of these key industry trends.
To this end, in 2021, Qualcomm Ventures launched the XR Industry Investment Alliance. It is hoped that through such investment alliances, the development of the XR industry will be promoted, so that the participating enterprises can exchange information in a collaborative manner, and the excellent XR enterprises will be given priority support through investment. At present, there are 30 investment institutions that have signed up and participated in investment alliances.
In Shen Jin's view, this is also the mission of Qualcomm Investment: to provide insights for external innovation, support qualcomm's strategic business goals, accelerate and influence the development of the industrial chain and obtain good financial returns.
Shen Jin said, "Whether it is XR, or the chip field like Denglin Technology, the robot field of Lingdong Technology, and the field of assisted driving and automatic driving in which Zhixing is located, 2022 will be a very busy year, including the need for technology update iteration, mass production delivery, and further needs of users." For 2022, we are still full of expectations, and believe that it will be a more fruitful year. ”
Qualcomm Ventures was founded in November 2000 to provide strategic investments to early-stage high-tech companies with a $500 million start-up fund. With offices in China, Europe, India, Israel, South Korea, Latin America and North America, it focuses on emerging and hardcore technologies and invests in companies from early stage to development.