[News] Ant Group Accelerates Semiconductor Investment Push

Ant Group is ramping up its semiconductor strategy, completing three major rounds of investment in the past week that span critical areas of the chip industry. The fintech giant has taken stakes in ReRAM memory developer Innostar Semi, AI edge chipmaker YeZhiXin Technology, and expanded its holdings in high-end networking chip company Clounix. Together, these moves highlight Ant’s growing focus on new memory, network hardware, and edge computing—key pillars supporting its “AI First” strategy and ambitions for a self-reliant chip ecosystem.

Since declaring “AI First” as a core strategic pillar in 2023, Ant Group has steadily deepened its semiconductor footprint. In 2024, the company joined the Series B round of AI chipmaker Metax Tech and led a multi-hundred-million-yuan Series A3 financing for MUCSE, a firm specializing in security chips.

That pace has accelerated in 2025. Earlier this year, through its subsidiary Shanghai Yunyang Consulting, Ant acquired a 3.92% stake in Tsing Micro Technology, a Beijing-based startup focused on reconfigurable computing chips for smart computing centers, large AI models, autonomous driving, and intelligent security applications.

The momentum continued last week with the trio of fresh investments in Innosatr, Yezhixin and Clounix Networks.

“Ant values the forward-looking nature and uniqueness of technologies when evaluating frontier tech projects,” a company investment executive noted. “AI is driving a technological revolution that will profoundly impact the industry. For large tech firms with abundant resources, strategic investment is not just an option—it’s a responsibility to leverage wisely.”

Industry observers suggest Ant’s flurry of 2025 investments marks a shift in strategy—from a focus solely on cloud AI chips to a broader “infrastructure + frontier technology + edge application” coverage, aimed at building a self-sufficient ecosystem aligned with its core businesses.

Ant is not alone. Chinese tech majors like ByteDance and Tencent are also making bold semiconductor bets.

ByteDance, for example, invested in Innostar in 2024, while earlier backing chip developer Silicon Integrated 2022 and GPU startup Moore Threads in 2021. The company has also supported YunSilicon (data center networking chips), Rivai IC (RISC-V), and Optiark (diffractive optical chips).

Tencent, meanwhile, has backed AI computing player Enflame Technology and DPU startup Jaguar Microsystems, and in 2025 added stakes in IC design house Joywell Semi and silicon photonics firm Silith Technology.

(Photo credit: Ant Group)