July 26, 2026, Singapore — Another major news in the Asian semiconductor design field. BoldBrain, a custom SoC design company headquartered in Singapore, today announced the completion of a $120 million Series C funding round, co-led by Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia and Temasek, with existing investor Qualcomm Ventures also participating. The funding will be used to accelerate the mass production and global market expansion of its edge AI SoC series based on the RISC-V architecture.
RISC-V SoC: Advancing from IoT to Edge AI
Founded in 2021, BoldBrain primarily provides customized SoC design services from architecture design to tape-out, especially focusing on low-power, high-performance RISC-V processor cores. The company's founder and CEO Li Weiming stated that after this funding, they will launch the flagship product "BrainCore 3000," a RISC-V SoC for intelligent security, industrial vision, and autonomous driving edge computing. It adopts 12nm FinFET process, integrates 512 custom AI acceleration units and a dual-core RISC-V 64-bit processor, achieving 32 TOPS inference performance.
"Asia, especially Southeast Asia, is becoming a hotbed for the RISC-V ecosystem. We not only design chips but also provide complete software toolchains and reference designs to help customers quickly bring AI products to market," said Li Weiming at the funding announcement. According to the company, BrainCore 3000 has secured pre-order contracts from over 10 customers, including smart city projects and robot manufacturers, and is expected to enter mass production in Q1 2027.
Market Sees Growing Demand for Customized SoCs
In recent years, with the fragmentation of AI application scenarios, general-purpose processors have become insufficient to meet all needs, and the customized SoC (ASIC) market has expanded rapidly. According to IC Insights, the global custom SoC market is expected to exceed $25 billion in 2026, with AI-related applications accounting for over 40%. BoldBrain's funding is a microcosm of this trend. Temasek investment director Chen Jiamin commented: "BoldBrain's deep accumulation in the RISC-V field and its ability to commercialize quickly make it a potential leader in the Asia-Pacific design service market."
Meanwhile, good news also came from the Chinese market. Shanghai semiconductor design company XinQiYuan officially launched its new-generation DPU (Data Processing Unit) chip "Yuanze 1" on July 25. The chip is based on a self-developed architecture, integrating RISC-V control cores and data acceleration engines, primarily targeting data centers and cloud computing scenarios. XinQiYuan founder Wang Ming said: "DPU is the third pillar of cloud computing besides CPU and GPU. We hope to provide high-performance solutions for domestic cloud vendors through independently controllable designs."
Asian Design Companies Enhance Global Competitiveness
Asian semiconductor design companies have been rising in the global industry chain in recent years. From traditional Taiwan MediaTek and Korea Samsung LSI to emerging design service companies in mainland China and Southeast Asia, regional innovation vitality is strong. According to the "OceanRing Asian Semiconductor Design Company Report," Asian design companies accounted for 48% of global chip design revenue in 2025, with AI-related chip design growing over 60%.
- Design-as-a-Service Trend: More Asian companies are shifting from single chip sales to providing "chip + algorithm + software" total solutions, with BoldBrain's Turnkey model being a typical example.
- Rise of RISC-V Ecosystem: The open-source instruction set architecture RISC-V is favored by Asian design companies for its customizability and cost advantages. The number of RISC-V Foundation members in China, Singapore, India and other countries has surged.
- Geopolitical Drivers: Affected by export controls, companies in China and Southeast Asia are accelerating independent R&D, boosting local design capabilities and bringing substantial orders to regional design service companies.
Future Outlook: Differentiated Competition and Capacity Challenges
Despite the bright prospects, Asian semiconductor design companies still face challenges. Advanced process capacity is tight, especially below 7nm, mainly controlled by TSMC and Samsung, requiring design companies to lock in capacity in advance. In addition, talent shortage is a constraining factor. BoldBrain plans to use part of the funding to establish R&D centers in Singapore and India to attract top chip design talent.
Analysts point out that the next five years are a critical window for the development of Asian design companies. Whoever can first achieve large-scale deployment of RISC-V in AI, IoT and other markets will secure the high ground in the next chip landscape. With breakthroughs from companies like BoldBrain and XinQiYuan, Asian semiconductor design is shifting from "manufacturing follower" to "design leader."
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