NovuMicro raises $150M Series C extension as inference demand fuels in-memory chip bets

What's the deal? Chinese chipmaker NovuMicro has raised more than US$137.5M (≈$150 million) in a Series C extension, the company announced in October. Jian Tou Investment led the round, with Hangzhou CapitalDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and Kaite Capital among the participants.

Why now? Combined with its earlier Series C1, NovuMicro has raised more than US$275M in two months. The funds will support product iteration and mass-production stocking.

What's the endgame? NovuMicro builds computing-in-memory chips, which cut the time and energy cost of shuttling data between storage and computing units. Its products target both terminal and cloud-side inference markets; the first three chips have been taped out, with customer testing planned for early 2027.

What could go wrong? The approach still has to prove it can compete at scale. With chips not yet in customer testing, the gap between tape-out and continuous sales remains the key risk.

The signal: NovuMicro's round is part of a cluster of large Chinese computing-in-memory financings. Houmo Intelligence recently closed a multibillion-yuan Series B, and 9th Sense Semiconductor reportedly raised US$137.5M in six months. The driver is a shift in AI workloads: as agents repeatedly call models, retrieve data, and run tools, continuous inference demand — and its cost and energy toll — is pushing investors toward lower-power architectures that rethink how storage and computing interact.

Read more: eu.36kr.com

Image credit: IBM Research