Qualcomm Ventures recently presented its 2021 report card of investments in China with focus on 5G-enabled intelligent connectivity. At the Qualcomm Ventures China media briefing on January 13, James Shen, Vice President, Qualcomm International, Inc. and Managing Director of Qualcomm Ventures China, shared the work Qualcomm Ventures did across the world and especially in China in 2021 and announced new investments in three Chinese startups in the fourth quarter of 2021, including Denglin Technology, ForwardX Robotics and Haomo.AI.
Qualcomm’s vision is to enable a world where everyone and everything is intelligently connected, said James Shen. In delivering on this vision, Qualcomm’s technologies and businesses are highly relevant to key industry trends, including 5G expanding into enterprise networking, automotive digitalization and automation, vehicles becoming cloud connected and XR as the device platform for the metaverse. Qualcomm stands at the intersection of these trends to enable every key technology.
Qualcomm Ventures has over US$2 billion assets under management worldwide and made over 360 investments, with more than 150 active companies in its portfolio. Seventeen portfolio companies had unicorn exits in the last five years. More than twenty active companies in Qualcomm Ventures’ portfolio went public or got acquired in 2021.
Qualcomm Ventures has invested in over 70 companies in China, among which more than ten firms have grown into unicorns. When it comes to the investment direction and strategy in China, James Shen said, Qualcomm Ventures’ current investments in China are mainly focused on four areas, i.e., AI+5G, XR+5G, robotics/autonomous driving +5G and IoT+5G.
In executing this strategy, Qualcomm Ventures made new investments in SinoITS, Future Mind, SageRAN and GalaxyCore between the first quarter and third quarter of 2021, while completing follow-up investments in GantuAI, SinoITS, ZongmuTech and Extreme Vision.
In the fourth quarter, Qualcomm Ventures made investments in three companies, that is, Denglin Technology, ForwardX Robotics and Haomo.AI.
·Denglin Technology is a general-purpose GPU (GPGPU) chip company whose innovative GPU + software-defined on-chip heterogeneous architecture is compatible to the current mature GPU ecosystem by harnessing deeply-integrated hardware and software. Its architecture has excellent compute performance and is commercialized in many verticals such as smart city and Internet.
·ForwardX Robotics is a global technology leader in the fields of AI and Robotics. Through its flexible automation platform comprising of intelligent mobile robots and AI-enabled software, ForwardX delivers material handling solutions for warehousing and manufacturing facilities that offer better performance at better value.
·Haomo.AI is a leading autonomous driving solution provider in China, whose solutions are widely used in Great Wall Motor passenger vehicles. The company’s advanced driver assistance system (ADAS) solutions based on Qualcomm’s Snapdragon Ride platforms will power passenger vehicles in mass production in mid-2022.
It’s not hard to see these portfolio companies are close or relevant to Qualcomm’s strategic blueprint and are in the fields that Qualcomm Ventures focuses on and ramps up efforts for.
When talking about the plans for the upcoming year, James Shen said, 2021 was a busy year for Qualcomm Ventures; in 2022, the investment arm’s goal in China is to expand investments.