Reported 18 Sept 2026 Chips

A Chinese company building AI data centre chips on an open design raised nearly 2 billion yuan, with the country's chip foundry investor in the round.

On September 18 Chinese financial press reported that EVAS Intelligence had closed a financing of nearly 2 billion yuan, about 280 million dollars, at a post-money valuation of roughly 15 billion yuan, about 2.1 billion dollars. More than twenty institutions took part, among them Huatai Innovation, Eastern Bell Capital, SMIC Capital, which is the investment arm connected to China's largest chip foundry, and Tongfu Microelectronics, one of the country's large chip packaging firms.

The company builds cloud AI accelerators on RISC-V, an instruction set nobody owns and no government can revoke a licence to. The caveat that matters is that none of this is confirmed by EVAS itself, no round name was given, and no shipment or revenue figure was published.

Until now

China's answer to chip export controls was read through the four listed accelerator companies and Huawei, all building on proprietary instruction sets of their own.

Now

Add an open instruction set to the list of things China is buying its way out of dependence with, and read SMIC Capital and a packaging house in the same round as a supply chain assembling around it.

The interesting thing about this round is not the size. Nearly 2 billion yuan is about 280 million dollars, which is a fifth of what a single American AI data centre company raised on the same day, and a valuation of 15 billion yuan puts EVAS well below the four Chinese accelerator firms that have already listed in Shanghai. The interesting thing is the architecture and the shareholder list read together. EVAS builds cloud AI chips on RISC-V, an instruction set that is published rather than licensed, which means there is no company and no government that can withdraw permission to use it. Every other route China has taken out of Nvidia dependence, Huawei's Ascend line included, still runs on an instruction set somebody owns. And the money in this round is not generalist venture money. SMIC Capital is tied to the country's largest foundry. Tongfu Microelectronics is one of its large packaging and test houses. Those are the two steps that turn a design into a chip you can ship.

Set it against the week. Huawei spent Thursday in Shanghai pulling its next accelerator forward by three quarters and filing its interconnect design with an international standards body. Enflame listed on the STAR Market on September 11 and tripled on the first day, completing the set of four Chinese accelerator companies in public hands. On the same Friday a photonics firm working on thin-film lithium niobate interconnects and a quantum software company backed by a China Mobile fund both closed rounds. None of these is a headline on its own. Together they are a supply chain being capitalised layer by layer, below the level where a front page notices, and the layer funded here is the one an export control cannot reach. Add an open instruction set to the list of things China is buying its way out of dependence with, and read SMIC Capital and a packaging house in the same round as a supply chain assembling around it.

How it got here

Jul 2026
EVAS shows a RISC-V AI SuperNode at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, with the Epoch chip and a 3.2 terabit per second ELink interconnect.
Sep 11
Enflame lists on Shanghai's STAR Market and triples on its first day, completing the set of four listed Chinese accelerator companies. Carded in Edition 018.
Sep 17
Huawei pulls the Ascend 960DT forward by three quarters and files its near-package optics design with the Optical Internetworking Forum. Carded in Edition 025.
Sep 18
EVAS Intelligence is reported to have closed nearly 2 billion yuan at about 15 billion yuan post-money, with SMIC Capital and Tongfu Microelectronics among more than twenty investors.
Who has to react
SMIC, whose investment arm is now a shareholder in a customer for its own capacity; Tongfu Microelectronics, which packages what this designs; Huawei, Cambricon, Enflame, Biren and Moore Threads, which build on instruction sets they control and now have an open-architecture competitor at home; RISC-V International and the Chinese RISC-V alliance, whose case for the architecture just acquired a data-centre reference; the US Bureau of Industry and Security, whose controls attach to technology and entities rather than to a published instruction set; Nvidia and Arm, whose China positions this is designed to make unnecessary; and every Chinese cloud operator weighing a second domestic supplier.

The evidence

EVAS Intelligence has published no announcement in English and we could not reach a company statement or a Chinese regulatory filing carrying the figures. Everything here rests on Chinese financial press reports of September 18 and 19 carried by PANews and ChainCatcher and summarised by Tech Startups. The verification event is a company announcement carrying the amount and the investor list, a National Enterprise Credit Information Publicity System registration change showing the new shareholders, or a prospectus if the company files to list, by March 31, 2027. Until one of those lands this stays Reported and we say so.

ObservedFriday September 18 into Saturday September 19, 2026, Beijing time. Chinese outlets PANews and ChainCatcher reported that EVAS Intelligence had completed a financing of nearly 2 billion yuan, roughly 280 million US dollars, at a post-money valuation of approximately 15 billion yuan, roughly 2.1 billion dollars.

The whole observation, as recorded

The round is described as involving more than twenty institutions. Named participants: Huatai Innovation, Eastern Bell Capital, SMIC Capital, Zhongxin Juyuan, Andon Health, Renai Capital, Tongfu Microelectronics, Sieyuan Industry Fund, Heli Capital, Xinxin Leasing, Hengxu Capital, Shangqi Capital, Jianguang Zhanlu and Rongyi Capital. No round letter was given, no lead was named, and no use of proceeds was published. Product record, from the company's July 2026 appearance at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai: a RISC-V AI SuperNode supporting 64 to 128 fully interconnected cards per rack and described as scaling to 100,000-card clusters; the Epoch chip, presented as China's first RISC-V cloud-scale AI chip, supporting block-quantised FP8 precision; an ELink interconnect at 3.2 terabits per second per chip with latency described at the hundred-nanosecond level; an orthogonal backplane-free rack design with full-rack liquid cooling; and a software stack called EVACA with a KernelFab operator engine and a VISA virtual instruction set intended to let one program run across several chips. The company states an annual iteration cadence for both chips and SuperNodes, cooperation agreements with Zhongneng Intelligent Computing and Guofu Data, and deployments with customers in internet, telecommunications, financial and energy sectors. No independent benchmark of any of this has been published. The surrounding record: Enflame priced its Shanghai STAR Market offering on September 2 and listed on September 11, tripling on its first day, carded in Editions 008 and 018; Huawei moved the Ascend 960DT forward by three quarters and filed its near-package optics design with the Optical Internetworking Forum on September 17, carded in Edition 025; China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published an AI software plan on September 11, carded in Edition 019; and a state compute node in Hebei was reported on September 12, carded in Edition 020. On the same day, disclosed Chinese AI hardware financings also included Xili Optoelectronics at the 100 million yuan scale for thin-film lithium niobate photonic interconnects and Arclight Quantum above 100 million yuan led by a China Mobile fund.

Established

Chinese financial press reported on September 18 and 19, 2026 that EVAS Intelligence closed a financing of nearly 2 billion yuan at a post-money valuation of about 15 billion yuan.
More than twenty institutions are reported to have taken part, including SMIC Capital and Tongfu Microelectronics alongside Huatai Innovation and Eastern Bell Capital.
EVAS presented a RISC-V AI SuperNode at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in July 2026, with the Epoch chip, FP8 support and a 3.2 terabit per second ELink interconnect.
The company states cooperation agreements with Zhongneng Intelligent Computing and Guofu Data and deployments across internet, telecommunications, financial and energy customers.

Not established

That the figures are accurate. EVAS has confirmed nothing, no filing has been produced, and the amount and valuation come from press reports alone, which is why this card is Reported.
That the chips are competitive. No independent benchmark has been published, the SuperNode figures are the company's own, and a 100,000-card scaling claim is an architectural statement rather than a delivered system.
That RISC-V removes export exposure. The instruction set is open, but advanced manufacturing, high-bandwidth memory and electronic design software are not, and those are where the controls bite.
That the Chinese state directed this. SMIC Capital and a China Mobile fund appearing in separate rounds the same day is consistent with state direction and equally consistent with the ordinary behaviour of industrial investors.

Why it weighs this much

Signal strength

CostModerate

CommitmentMedium

ReversibilityMedium

PersistenceYears

Cost is moderate: nearly 2 billion yuan is real money and the participation of a foundry investment arm and a packaging house costs those firms optionality with rival customers, but the sum is small next to the American rounds closing the same week and next to what a leading-edge accelerator programme consumes. Commitment is medium. The money is committed and the shareholder register changes, which is hard to undo, but no round name, no lead investor and no use of proceeds were published, and the company has confirmed nothing itself. Reversibility is medium because a design company can pivot architectures and investors can write down a stake. Persistence is years because instruction set choices are the slowest thing in a chip programme to change; a software stack, an operator library and a customer's ported models take years to build and years to abandon.

What to watch

strengthens A named Chinese cloud operator, state compute node or listed company discloses deployment of EVAS hardware, or EVAS files to list on the STAR Market or in Hong Kong, by December 31, 2027.
weakens No EVAS deployment is named by any third party and no independent benchmark of the Epoch chip is published by December 31, 2027, or the reported financing is contradicted by a company statement or filing.

The words

RISC-V: An open instruction set: the basic vocabulary a chip understands, published free for anyone to use. Unlike Arm or x86 there is no owner to refuse a licence, which is why it matters to a country under export controls.
SuperNode: A rack of accelerators wired together so tightly that software can treat them as one large machine. The number of cards that can be fully interconnected is the figure that decides how big a model the rack can train or serve.
FP8: An eight-bit number format. Using fewer bits per number lets a chip do more calculations per second and hold more of a model in memory, at some cost in precision.
Post-money valuation: What a company is judged to be worth immediately after new money arrives, including that money. Fifteen billion yuan is about 2.1 billion dollars.

Your call

If the Chinese press reports hold: which explanation do you believe?

A call is final. Other people's calls show after yours.