According to media reports, NXP recently sued Semidrive, a semiconductor company founded by several former employees.
The reason for NXP’s suit against Semidrive is that these former employees have started to create new companies with the same business operations during NXP’s work and persuaded NXP’s technical team to join the company they set up.
Founded in June 2018, Semidrive has R&D centers in Nanjing and Shanghai. According to public information, the chairman of Semidrive, Zhang Qiang, has nearly 20 years of experience in the automotive electronics industry and the automotive semiconductor industry. He is responsible for the Greater China region in well-known companies such as Delphi Automotive, Philips Semiconductors, Infineon Semiconductor, and Freescale Semiconductor. In June 2018, he co-founded Semidrive Semiconductor and became chairman.
According to the Semidrive official website, it is a startup that specializes in the design and manufacture of intelligent driving chips for cars. The founders are all from the world famous automotive semiconductor companies, with more than 20 years of chip design, marketing and sales experience. The team is committed to building Semidrive into a leader in China's automotive smart chips and becoming a global leader in smart driving chips.
According to industry sources, Semidrive's angel round of financing has received a total investment of 100 million yuan, and has reached strategic cooperation intentions with a number of customers. In addition, there are many well-known investment companies interested in it. A startup with such high attention and funding is rare in the industry. With a technical team and funding, Semidrive's chip manufacturing project can be launched quickly. Although it takes time for the chip to enter the market, because the team is from NXP and will become a direct competitor of NXP in the future, and has a substantial impact on its market share, this is the direct reason for NXP to bring it to court.
