China’s state investment funds can’t keep their hands off US tech. Despite restrictions from Washington, the FT found state run funds are continuing to buy up stakes in US semiconductor companies.
California-headquartered Pixelworks was one of the companies to recently receive investment from China’s main state-run semiconductor investment fund. Pixelworks designs video- and pixel-processing chips.
It’s a risky play for the mandarins in Beijing. Pixelworks’ revenue in the third quarter came in at $8m, half of what it had earned a year prior. Total revenue was also equal to its net loss for the period. (Its Nasdaq listed shares are down about 20 per cent for the year.)
In their all-out drive for chip self-sufficiency, Chinese officials have racked up more than a few bad bets. National champion Tsinghua Unigroup, which Beijing has poured tens of billions into, defaulted on a bond last month. A local government recently took over another $20bn chip fab that…