What we’ve found is that in most cases, they don’t add much value with respect to exiting.

We dug through the S1’s of 105 tech companies and found that only 17 out of the 105 investors had a strategic investor (an S1 is a doc filed with the SEC before going public).
ProPlus CEO Zhihong Liu was once a VP at Cadence Design Systems, while its senior executive director, Chenming Hu, once worked as the CTO of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing. The view is that these investors provide not only capital, but also guidance on the product roadmap, engineering and dev resources, and critical introductions. Intel Capital curates thousands of business development introductions each year between its portfolio companies and the Global 2000. Strategic investors can be a valuable source of capital, but are they critical? In other cases, they invest because they’re heavy users of the product.

Some notable strategic investors include Salesforce Ventures, Intel Capital, Verizon Ventures, SAP, and Microsoft. Intel Capital has consistently invested in Chinese startups. Since inception, the company has raised a total of $120 million. The fund often co-invests with Tsinghua Sinoking Capital, Summitview Capital, Intel Capital.

We can commit in 3 weeks and our check is $1mm. Habana Labs is a fabless semiconductor company located in Tel-Aviv, Israel and San Jose, California, employing over 120 people worldwide. The GaudiTM training processor solution is slated to sample in the second quarter of 2019. If you are going to take on a strategic investor, make sure they don’t have any unique controls or rights outside of those granted to normal investors. Intel Capital, which launched in 1991, made a total of 1,588 investments prior to the announcement for three Chinese companies , according to Crunchbase data “Intel Capital identifies and invests in disruptive startups that are working to improve the way we work and live. It is led by top technologists and entrepreneurs that built multiple successful semiconductor companies and is backed by premier venture capitalists. All Rights Reserved.

Habana Labs was founded in 2016 to unlock the true potential of AI by providing an order of magnitude improvements in processing performance, cost and power consumption. The list is below. "We decided to support Habana Labs since its early days due its ambitious and unique roadmap, with leapfrog performance and power efficiency targets, which allows it to address multiple AI applications," said Bessemer Venture Partner's Adam Fisher. "We are excited to invest in a dynamic team with a proven track record in the industry," said Wendell Brooks, Senior Vice President of Intel Corporation and President of Intel Capital. Spectrum Materials, based in the southern Chinese province of Fujian, makes gases that are broadly used in semiconductor fabrication plants to manufacture physical chips.

For instance, three out of the seven hardware companies we looked at had a strategic investor whereas industries like marketplaces, social media, and e-commerce barely had any.
The three Chinese firms include Zhejiang province-based digital pathology systemmaker Konfoong Biotech International (KFBIO), Jinan-headquartered design automation company ProPlus Electronics, and Quanzhou-based semiconductor materials firm Spectrum Materials, Intel said, without disclosing the specific amount of investment. Cision Distribution 888-776-0942 They invest in companies with run rate revenue of $2mm+ and year over year growth of 50%+. The Goya solution consists of a complete hardware and software stack, including a high-performance graph compiler, hundreds of kernel libraries, and tools necessary to integrate with the software frameworks that customers use to optimize the deployment of AI inferencing. Intel Capital Invests in Three Chinese Startups. "Also, their holistic platform approach that supports its silicon with production-ready adapters and the necessary software tools, reinforces our belief in their plan.". TEL-AVIV, Israel and SAN JOSE, Calif., Nov. 15, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Habana Labs, Ltd. (www.habana.ai), a leading startup in the emerging AI processor space, today announced it has secured $75 million in an oversubscribed series B funding, led by Intel Capital, to fuel its continued growth. The fund usually invests in rounds together with 7-8 others.

The leaders in the field like Cadence Design Systems and Mentor Graphics are all U.S companies.