Chinese chip startup OnMicro wins the Best IC Unicorn Award of the Year

By Greg Gao

OnMicro(昂瑞微), a Chinese RF chip design house, won the Best IC Unicorn Award of the Year at the 2023 China Semiconductor Investment Alliance (CSIA) Annual Meeting & China IC Industry Award Ceremony held on December 17 in Hefei, eastern China’s Anhui Province.

Zhu Lina, deputy general manager of OnMicro, told JW Insights at the ceremony that OnMicro

has achieved breakthroughs in customer acceptance, covering most of the major mobile brands in China - Honor, Xiaomi, Samgsung, ZTE, Lenovo, Transsion and ODMs like Huaqin, Longcheer and Wingtech. OnMicro’s products are applied to wearables, wireless keyboard, Bluetooth controller, fingerprint locks. Its 5G PAMiD is being verified and scheduled for mass production in the first half of 2023.

As the first tier RF front-end chip supplier, OnMicro was established in 2012 and located in Zhongguancun Science and Technology Park in Beijing. Its founders are experts with experience from leading domestic and international IC and electronics companies.

“Although the RF front-end market has also undergone structural adjustments, the trend of domestic substitution in China will continue for a long time.” This allows many semiconductor players, including OnMicro to maintain a faster R&D pace and narrow the technological gap between China and the world, Zhu added.

The company has focused on developing RF-integrated circuit chips, analog integrated circuit chips, and System-on-Chip. The product lines include wireless communications chips, power management chips, RF front-end modules.

According to China Semiconductor Investment Alliance (CSIA) announcement, the Best IC Unicorn Award of the Year aims to discover startups with great growth potential in the semiconductor industry. CSIA hopes the award will bring attention and resources to those companies, helping them become the mainstay and significantly contribute to the industry.