Xingsi Semiconductor has completed a new round of strategic industrial financing, introducing investors including Shanghai State-owned Capital's Xinyuan Investment, Zhu Zifang Venture Capital under Fuzhou Gulou State-owned Capital, Full Truck Alliance, Xinhuanet Venture Capital, Tongding Group, Boqing Capital, and Shengrong Capital; existing shareholders Langrun Lifang, GGV Capital, and Pianxuan Fund continued to invest additional funds.
This is the third financing round disclosed by Xingsi this year, coming less than half a year after raising 1.5 billion yuan in February. With this, this star enterprise focusing on 5G/6G satellite communication baseband chip R&D has become another Shanghai-based unicorn valued at over 10 billion dollars.
The Chinese commercial aerospace sector is currently booming. At 12:15 on July 10th, the Long March 10B carrier rocket was launched from the Hainan Commercial Space Launch Site. About 6 minutes after the first and second stage separation, the first stage performed a vertical return and was successfully recovered on an offshore recovery platform. This marks China's first successful controlled recovery of a launch vehicle first stage. A judgment is forming: As an essential component of 6G and commercial aerospace, large-scale rocket recovery and reuse for low-earth orbit satellite internet means significantly reduced launch costs and increased launch frequency. Commercial aerospace is moving from narrative to implementation, with the large-scale realization of the industrial chain officially commencing.
Another indicator is the formal announcement in July this year of the first batch of member list for the Commercial Aerospace Innovation Consortium initiated by the China National Space Administration. Covering seven groups—satellite manufacturing, rockets & launch, TT&C & operations, data applications, emerging fields, comprehensive services, and technological innovation—the list includes 271 representative entities, signaling that commercial aerospace is entering a phase of industrial chain collaboration. The leading unit of the consortium is the National Remote Sensing Center of China under CNSA, with companies like China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, Shanghai Yuanxin, LandSpace, GalaxySpace, etc., selected. Xingsi Semiconductor is the only 6G satellite internet baseband chip company on the list.
Simultaneously, Shanghai is making a full-fledged effort to build a globally competitive 'Satellite Internet City'. Major projects like Shanghai Yuanxin continue to land, and industrial chain resources are constantly gathering. In other words, Xingsi is not an isolated chip company growing alone, but occupies a crucial position within Shanghai's satellite internet industry cluster.
Satellite Internet Undergoes Value Reassessment
In recent years, the biggest focus in commercial aerospace has been on rockets, satellites, and constellation construction.
Last month, SpaceX completed its NASDAQ listing, with its market value surpassing $2 trillion. Among its assets, the Starlink service is the biggest 'cash cow,' contributing nearly all of the company's cash flow. Examining SpaceX's prospectus reveals a total addressable market (TAM) for connectivity services reaching $1.6 trillion, with Starlink broadband accounting for about $870 billion and Starlink Mobile direct-to-cell services about $740 billion. The data proves that getting satellites into space is just the first step; only when terminals can truly connect does a sustainable commercial loop form.
This judgment holds true for the Chinese market as well. As rockets continue to launch and Chinese constellations accelerate deployment, terminals, as the key link enabling the industry's commercial loop, have evolved into a dual-track collaborative development trend: B-end applications for government and enterprises cover agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, fisheries, aviation & shipping, ocean observation, emergency rescue, water conservancy, energy, and other fields, providing crucial support for national strategic security and real industry operations. The C-end for the general public includes directions like satellite-direct-to-phone, automotive/eVTOL, personal consumer terminals, etc., which will continuously unleash broader terminal demand and expand the application boundaries of ubiquitous connectivity and mass accessibility.
Since the beginning of this year, signals from both policy and industry standards have been consistent. The Politburo of the CPC Central Committee proposed building a new generation communication network, including 6G forward-looking R&D, satellite internet, and integrated space-air-ground-sea all-domain stereoscopic networking. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially allocated the 6GHz frequency band to the IMT-2030 (6G) Promotion Group, making China the first country globally to allocate 6G trial frequencies. Globally, the international standards organization 3GPP recently finalized the 6G standard timeline, planning to launch formal commercialization around 2030. Satellite-direct-to-phone is beginning to transition from narrowband emergency communication towards high-speed broadband communication.
Satellite internet, relying on the development of commercial aerospace and 6G communication, is accelerating into the industrialization stage, and its commercial value is also being reassessed. This is why baseband chips—widely recognized as 'the most difficult chip in the field'—are being revalued.
Why Do Investors Continue to Invest? Starting with a Case
5G communication networking primarily relies on terrestrial cellular networks, requiring only base stations built on the ground. In the 6G era, communication requirements integrate terrestrial cellular networks with satellite internet. Base stations are launched into space with satellites via rockets, and after a sufficient number of satellites are deployed, communication networking is achieved. What truly enables the connection between ground terminals and space-based base stations is the baseband chip inside the terminals. It is responsible for processing wireless signals and is one of the most complex and highest-barrier chips in the entire communication system.
Compared to terrestrial mobile communication, low-earth orbit satellite communication must also solve challenges like the large Doppler shift caused by the satellite's high-speed movement, long delays in space transmission, and significant path loss. This means that satellite communication baseband chips cannot simply reuse traditional communication chips; they require a new technological system upgrade, placing extremely high technical demands on the processing capabilities of terminal baseband chips. Whoever completes verification first has the opportunity to become a crucial entry point for the future terminal ecosystem.
What drives continuous capital investment is not merely the technological concept, but the fact that the industrial chain is beginning to recognize Xingsi's technical roadmap and engineering verification capabilities.
Currently, Xingsi has obtained product certifications from global leading smartphone manufacturers, new energy vehicle companies, and mainstream communication module manufacturers, with an increasing diversity of clients. In March this year, ZTE Corporation and Xingsi announced the establishment of a strategic partnership. The two parties will collaborate around 6G NTN low-earth orbit satellite internet to jointly promote the maturation and commercial deployment of space-ground integrated communication network technology. For a chip startup founded just six years ago, being able to establish a strategic partnership with a communication industry leader signifies that its technical capabilities are beginning to integrate into the industrial system, rather than remaining solely in the laboratory stage.
To date, the company has completed a full technological closed-loop from laboratory verification, ground testing, to in-orbit verification. It completed laboratory verification in 2023; ground field testing in 2024; and in 2025, the company accomplished the world's first verification of high-definition video communication via satellite-direct-to-phone based on the 3GPP 5G NTN standard. Throughout this period, the company maintained a 100% first-pass success rate for baseband chip tape-outs, establishing globally leading full-stack in-house R&D capabilities. It built its own ultra-large-scale chip design verification platform, independently completing the entire R&D process from baseband algorithms, physical layer, protocol stack software to SoC chip design, verification, and mass production, achieving 100% independent control over core technologies.
Compared to terrestrial communication, the daily overflight window period available for in-orbit verification for satellites is typically only a few minutes. The practical experience and data accumulated from each in-orbit test are precious, representing immense R&D costs and time investments. Therefore, one of the biggest barriers for satellite communication baseband chips is not just the technology itself, but also the longer pre-importation and verification cycles.
Simultaneously, the company insists on adopting the ASIC route. Although R&D investment is higher and the cycle longer, ASICs can significantly reduce power consumption and chip area, better aligning with the needs of future small-sized consumer terminals like satellite-direct-to-phone. In other words, Xingsi has been targeting compatibility with future large-scale commercial use from the start.
It is worth noting that Xingsi's industry role is not only that of a chip supplier but also a deep participant in the early stages of the satellite internet industry. Starting from the satellite constellation planning phase, the company participated in technical roadmap selection, overall solution demonstration, and full-process ground testing work. It has also collaborated with upstream and downstream partners to advance product definition and industry standard co-development. The first-mover experience advantages accumulated through long-term investment have also become important competitive barriers that are difficult for latecomers to replicate.
As the industry begins to enter the value realization phase, companies like this, which have completed key technology verification, diversified verification with leading large customers, and possess continuous engineering capabilities, are also more likely to receive sustained capital investment.
The Real Opportunity Emerges
What investors value is not just today's technology, but the industrial rhythm and development certainty over the next few years.
For chip companies, this means that the value space is beginning to extend from a single chip to modules, terminals, and even the entire ecosystem. Currently, Xingsi has formed a full suite of baseband SoC solutions covering L, S/C, S/S frequency bands for satellite-direct-to-phone, as well as Ku and Ka frequency bands for broadband satellite terminals. It has completed product certifications with multiple leading terminal manufacturers, automotive companies, and major communication equipment manufacturers, and is steadily advancing towards customers' large-scale commercial deployment.
Leveraging its own baseband chip technology accumulation and advantages from industrial chain collaborative resources, Xingsi follows the development trend of terminal integration and miniaturization, providing ecosystem partners with highly competitive terminal reference designs. This empowers terminal manufacturers to quickly create differentiated products and seize market opportunities.
During this year's MWC Shanghai, the company released the CM7620 broadband satellite communication module, further forming a complete product system covering 'chip-module-terminal'. Meanwhile, the company continues to participate in the formulation of 6G and satellite internet-related standards, laying the groundwork for future industry evolution.
Xingsi's current financing round does not merely signify the completion of funding for a chip company; it signifies capital's early-stage bet on the value chain of next-generation communication. As commercial aerospace and 6G integrated space-air-ground-sea communication progress, communication baseband chips are gradually becoming the key element determining terminal competitiveness.
By repeatedly investing in Xingsi, leading capital is betting on the most fundamental, and also the hardest-to-replace, communication capability in this round of industrial value reconstruction.
This article is from the WeChat public account 'PEdaily' (ID: pedaily2012), author: PEdaily.
