Mobvoi Inc (羽扇智信息), a Chinese artificial intelligence (AI) company and smart device maker, has selected banks for a Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO) that could raise about US$200 million to US$300 million, people familiar with the matter said.
The Beijing-based firm, which last month debuted its own AI large-language model, is working with China International Capital Corp (中國國際金融) and China Merchants Bank International (招銀國際) to prepare for the first-time share sale, the people said.
The IPO could take place as soon as this year, they said, asking not to be identified as the information is private.
With the early success of OpenAI Inc’s ubiquitous chatbot, AI companies in China are rushing to roll out their own answers to ChatGPT and seeking more funding to fuel the sector’s growth.
Beijing’s top Internet overseer has published draft guidelines that would mandate a security review of generative AI services such as Mobvoi’s Xulie Houzi (序列猴子) platform, as well as models from Baidu Inc (百度) and SenseTime Group Inc (商湯科技).
Founded in 2012 by a group of former employees of Alphabet Inc’s Google, Mobvoi three years later attracted the US tech giant’s first direct investment in China since it withdrew its search engine from the country in 2010.
Mobvoi is known to consumers as a maker of products including smartwatches and smart speakers.The company’s AI software is used in services including finance, telecommunications and senior care.
Along with a strategic partnership with Alphabet, Mobvoi also drew Volkswagen AG as an investor and partner via a 2017 funding round and the forming of a joint venture. It also counts Sequoia Capital (紅杉資本) and Zhenfund (真格基金) as backers.
Mobvoi has about 700 employees, and has offices in Seattle and Taipei, in addition to its headquarters in Beijing, its Web site shows.
The New Taiwan dollar is on the verge of overtaking the yuan as Asia’s best carry-trade target given its lower risk of interest-rate and currency volatility. A strategy of borrowing the New Taiwan dollar to invest in higher-yielding alternatives has generated the second-highest return over the past month among Asian currencies behind the yuan, based on the Sharpe ratio that measures risk-adjusted relative returns. The New Taiwan dollar may soon replace its Chinese peer as the region’s favored carry trade tool, analysts say, citing Beijing’s efforts to support the yuan that can create wild swings in borrowing costs. In contrast,
Nvidia Corp’s demand for advanced packaging from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) remains strong though the kind of technology it needs is changing, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said yesterday, after he was asked whether the company was cutting orders. Nvidia’s most advanced artificial intelligence (AI) chip, Blackwell, consists of multiple chips glued together using a complex chip-on-wafer-on-substrate (CoWoS) advanced packaging technology offered by TSMC, Nvidia’s main contract chipmaker. “As we move into Blackwell, we will use largely CoWoS-L. Of course, we’re still manufacturing Hopper, and Hopper will use CowoS-S. We will also transition the CoWoS-S capacity to CoWos-L,” Huang said
Nvidia Corp CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) is expected to miss the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump on Monday, bucking a trend among high-profile US technology leaders. Huang is visiting East Asia this week, as he typically does around the time of the Lunar New Year, a person familiar with the situation said. He has never previously attended a US presidential inauguration, said the person, who asked not to be identified, because the plans have not been announced. That makes Nvidia an exception among the most valuable technology companies, most of which are sending cofounders or CEOs to the event. That includes
INDUSTRY LEADER: TSMC aims to continue outperforming the industry’s growth and makes 2025 another strong growth year, chairman and CEO C.C. Wei says Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), a major chip supplier to Nvidia Corp and Apple Inc, yesterday said it aims to grow revenue by about 25 percent this year, driven by robust demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. That means TSMC would continue to outpace the foundry industry’s 10 percent annual growth this year based on the chipmaker’s estimate. The chipmaker expects revenue from AI-related chips to double this year, extending a three-fold increase last year. The growth would quicken over the next five years at a compound annual growth rate of 45 percent, fueled by strong demand for the high-performance computing
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