Global IC design IP sales grew 20.2% in 2022, achieving US$6.6 billion in total revenues compared to the US$5.56 billion in 2021, according to the "Design IP Report" published by the market research institute IPnest in April. The latest ranking puts Arm, Synopsys, Cadence, Imagination Technologies, and Alphawave as the top five chip IP vendors in 2022 in terms of design IP revenue.
Notably, China-based silicon IP vendor VeriSilicon is included in the list, at the seventh place. VeriSilicon's design IP revenue grew from US$109 million to US$133.6 million between 2021 and 2022, representing a 22.1% growth. Data from IPnest also showed that the China-based IP vendor accounted for 3% of the global silicon IP license market in 2022.
VeriSilicon was founded in Shanghai in 2001 and was listed on Shanghai Stock Exchange in 2022. That was also the year when the company turned losses into profits for the first time. After acquiring GPU IP vendor Vivante Corp. in 2015, VeriSilicon went on to develop six in-house processor IPs for AI applications, covering AI chips like GPU, GPGPU, and NPU. The company claims that its NPU IP has been adopted by 60 customers and used by a hundred types of AI chips. VeriSilicon also aimed to focus IP research and development in sectors such as AIoT, wearable, automotive electronics, and data center. Recently, the company has also turned its attention to AI-generated content, following the growing popularity of large language models in China.
In first-quarter 2023, VeriSilicon saw CNY539 million in revenue, an annual decline of 3.77%. According to the company, domestic sales accounted for 77.8% of total sales in first-quarter 2023, and more than half of sales came from system integrators, major internet companies, and cloud service providers.The latest publicly avaliable data from April 22 showed that China's semiconductor policy fund, known as the "Big Fund," is the third largest shareholder of VeriSilicon with a 6.97% stake. The fifth largest shareholder is the Hubei Xiaomi Changjiang Industrial Investment Fund, with a 5.45% stake in the company.
