36Kr Exclusive | China's leading silicon capacitor IDM enterprise raises 100 million yuan in financing, foraying into the AI chip and high-end optical module sectors
According to Hard Krypton, Senmaru Electronics, a wafer-level passive component enterprise, has recently completed a Series A financing of 100 million yuan. This round of financing is jointly led by well-known optical module industrial participants and YoToo Capital, with Shunrong Capital as a follow-on investor. The raised funds will be mainly used for technology development of silicon capacitors and IPD platforms, production capacity construction and global market expansion, so as to accelerate the large-scale commercial implementation of silicon capacitors in application scenarios such as high-end optical modules and vertical power supply for AI chips.
Founded in 2021 and headquartered in Suzhou, Senmaru Electronics is a leading domestic IDM enterprise of wafer-level passive components, which means the enterprise completes the full process of "design + manufacturing + testing" instead of only taking charge of one single link. Taking semiconductor technology as its underlying technical foundation, the company promotes passive components such as capacitors, inductors and resistors from the traditional discrete mounting mode to the silicon-based integrated technical paradigm, and provides chip-level solutions for the two core bottlenecks of "power supply" and "interconnection" in the AI computing power network.
Song Yi, the founder of the company, has been deeply engaged in the communication and electronic manufacturing industry for more than 20 years. He has both a global vision and local implementation capabilities, and has accumulated full-stack experience across the supply chain, product line and commercialization. The core members of the team have years of experience in the field of silicon capacitors and IPD integrated passive devices, covering a complete independent technology system from device design, process development to wafer manufacturing.
In recent years, the explosive demand for AI computing power is restructuring the semiconductor industrial chain at an unprecedented speed. From GPUs to ASICs, the power consumption of AI accelerator chips has risen from hundreds of watts to the kilowatt level, and the transient current demand of a single chip often reaches hundreds of amperes. At the same time, 800G and even 1.6T high-speed optical modules, as the core interconnection nodes of AI training and inference clusters, are iterating rapidly towards the direction of higher speed, smaller size and lower power consumption.
The traditional chip power supply adopts a lateral power supply architecture, the power supply path between the power management chip and the main chip is long, and the parasitic inductance and resistance will produce significant voltage fluctuation and IR drop under the transient load of hundreds of amperes, which directly restricts the performance release of the chip. Especially in large computing power chips such as GPUs, the number of decoupling capacitors and their placement space have become a rigid constraint in packaging design. The problem of "no enough space for capacitors" has become an engineering problem of the same magnitude as "insufficient computing power".
Compared with traditional MLCC (Multi-layer Ceramic Capacitors), silicon capacitors are manufactured based on semiconductor wafer technology, and have order-of-magnitude advantages in core indicators such as capacitance density per unit area, high-frequency decoupling performance, ESL and ESR. They are also thinner and smaller in size, which naturally adapts to high-density packaging and vertical power supply architectures.
From the perspective of technical logic, the combination of silicon capacitors and IPD integrated substrates essentially promotes passive components from "board-level assembly" to "wafer-level integration". This transition is not only a performance improvement, but also brings structural changes to the business model — when capacitors are no longer just passive materials, but become an important part of the chip packaging architecture, their industrial position will rise from a traditional passive component supplier to a key link in the system-in-package chain.
In the field of high-end optical modules, the value of silicon capacitors is also irreplaceable. The internal space of 800G/1.6T optical modules is extremely compact, and traditional discrete capacitors have been unable to meet the dual requirements of high-speed signal integrity and power integrity in terms of volume and performance. The ultra-thin packaging and high-frequency characteristics of silicon capacitors make them an ideal choice for optical module power management networks.
At present, the silicon capacitor market is mainly dominated by a few manufacturers in Japan and Europe, with a low localization rate. As a leading domestic IDM enterprise of wafer-level passive components, Senmaru Electronics has formed a product layout covering all categories of silicon capacitors, silicon inductors and IPD passive integrated chips, and its product system covers multiple directions such as IPD devices, IPD integrated substrates, chip capacitors, chip inductors and chip resistors. The company has continued to deliver silicon capacitors to leading customers, with a stable yield of over 95% and a production capacity of 300 million pieces per month, and its core performance indicators have reached the same level as international first-tier manufacturers.
Song Yi told Hard Krypton that the company has received orders from several world-class large customers in the past two years and completed the supply chain onboarding. "We expect that from 2026, the next four years will be our biggest opportunity period and outbreak period."
The following is an excerpt of the interview between Hard Krypton and Song Yi, the founder of Senmaru Electronics:
Hard Krypton: Why are passive components becoming more and more important in the AI era?
Song Yi: I think we can look at it from two aspects. First of all, passive components actually play a "service" role in all electronic systems. AI has relatively high requirements for high frequency, high bandwidth and high speed, and traditional components can no longer fully meet these requirements in the AI era, so our new type of components have become more prominent and gradually become rigid demand. This is from the perspective of technological iteration.
In addition, the performance of main chips including GPUs, CPUs, memories and optical chips is getting better and better, which accordingly puts forward higher requirements for our "service-type" components. In other words, the iteration of downstream chips and other products drives the demand and technical iteration of our type of components.
Hard Krypton: What is the biggest difficulty at present on the way from R&D to mass production?
Song Yi: I think the biggest problem for the whole industry at this stage is still the supply chain. There are relatively few players in this industry at present, but the customer demand in AI, automotive electronics and other fields is exploding, so our link is in a relatively scarce position in the whole supply chain and industrial chain. This not only brings us opportunities, but also puts forward higher requirements. Customers have very high performance requirements for the products themselves, but performance alone is not enough. We also need long-term supply capacity, delivery lead time, quality, brand, and the ability to serve customers in all aspects.
Hard Krypton: The certification cycle for passive components is relatively long, how do you view this problem?
Song Yi: A long certification cycle is the industrial law of our type of components. We cannot change the certification cycle of customers, but it itself is also a barrier for us. Customers need to spend a lot of energy to certify different manufacturers, so once we enter the supply chain, although the early stage is relatively tough, it will be more difficult for others to enter or replace us afterwards. At the same time, a long certification cycle also shows that the components themselves are very critical, and customers will not easily replace suppliers.
For us, customers only have one or two certification opportunities, and the long certification cycle requires our production and verification time to be shorter, and we should try our best to ensure that we pass the certification at one attempt. We need to conduct repeated internal verification to ensure that the requirements are met before applying for certification. This puts forward very high requirements for our technology, design, manufacturing and production cycle. At the same time, once we pass the certification of leading customers, it will also produce a strong driving effect. For example, after passing the certification of one leading customer and completing the delivery, it will be relatively easier to expand other customers; after obtaining the automotive grade certification, we can further expand customers in the automotive supply chain. Therefore, once the certification is passed, it will not only bring a single customer, but also produce a driving effect across the entire industry and related fields.
Hard Krypton: In addition to the certification cycle, what other core barriers do you think Senmaru Electronics has?
Song Yi: I think there are mainly two aspects. The first is the cultivation of the customer base. Customer cultivation is a very long process. In the past five years, we have cultivated a large number of customers, and gradually formed customers' awareness and trust in Senmaru Electronics. When customers are willing to hand over their products to us for production, this customer stickiness is a relatively large barrier, and new manufacturers entering the market must go through the same process.
The second is the full-chain capability of design and manufacturing. We have both design, manufacturing and testing capabilities at the same time, which is relatively rare in China. This type of components cannot be produced only with the thinking of manufacturing or OEM. Essentially, it is the two-way cross-integration of design and process manufacturing. All designs must be combined with processes, and the production line must also be combined with the design process. Globally, enterprises that produce silicon capacitors basically adopt this mode.