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Hong Kong investment arm backs Chinese RISC-V start-up StarFive in tech push
The partnership will see Hong Kong support StarFive in rolling out RISC-V chip applications in the city
www.scmp.com, Mar. 21, 2025 –
Shanghai-based semiconductor start-up StarFive aims to boost adoption of its chips with the financial backing of the Hong Kong government, according to its founder, as China bets on the open-source RISC-V architecture to strengthen its chip industry amid escalating tensions with the US.
The partnership would see Hong Kong support StarFive in rolling out RISC-V chip applications in the city, founder and CEO Thomas Xu Tao said in an interview.
“RISC-V has moved beyond its initial phase of foundational research … Its current focus is on real-world applications,” Xu said. “Implementing use cases is actually really difficult in the early stages and needs government guidance.”
RISC-V, pronounced “risk five”, is an open-source instruction set architecture that allows developers to configure and customise their chip designs. It competes with Intel’s x86 and Arm Holdings’ architecture, which dominate the personal computer and smartphone markets, respectively.
While RISC-V is not as widely used as Arm or x86, and most of its products still lag in performance, its open-source code base and energy efficiency have contributed to its growing popularity in recent years.
StarFive’s Towngas Chip, a RISC-V processor launched in November 2022 in collaboration with the Hong Kong and China Gas Company (Towngas), is set to be deployed in smart gas metres across Hong Kong as early as the second quarter, according to Xu.
With the application scope of the Towngas chip remaining relatively “small and narrow”, StarFive’s partnership with HKIC could open up larger use cases in the future, said Alan Chan, managing partner of Full Vision Capital, the founding investor of StarFive.
“Their endorsement is very important to us,” he said.
StarFive also plans to launch a more advanced 12-nanometre RISC-V processor designed for data-centre servers named “Lion Rock”, after a famous mountain in Hong Kong. Xu said mass production of Lion Rock could begin by the end of this year or early next year.
Xu founded StarFive in 2019, recognising the opportunities presented by RISC-V for new chipmakers in a market largely dominated by competitors focusing on proprietary technology.
Around that time, Peter Lee started seeking out home-grown chip firms after the US government imposed a seven-year export ban on ZTE that cut the Chinese telecoms equipment giant off from essential components and services, Chan said.
“He was already telling us at that time that China eventually needs to develop its own chips,” Chan said.
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