On Mar 11, the Securities Times reported that, according to people with knowledge of the matter, Canaan Creative, China’s second-largest maker of Bitcoin mining hardware, has just received hundreds of millions of US dollars through a new funding round. After the fundraising, Canaan now worth billions of dollars.

This news has been confirmed by Canaan. Although the firm didn’t reveal the exact value of the funding, it disclosed that there may be more new fundings on the way coming in the near future.

Canaan has claimed that they would focus on artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain ecosystem R&D. The company is aiming to use chips as an entry point for building a comprehensive AI-blockchain ecosystem.

Canaan Creative is a Beijing-based tech company founded in 2013. In 2015, the company received funding from the Tsinghua Triangle Research Institute and was introduced into Hangzhou as a key project. Its main business is the development, design, and sales of application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) chips and derivative devices.

In the integrated circuit industry chain, Canaan is in an upstream position and masters key algorithms and chip implementation technologies. Different to its rival Bitmain, Canaan does not involve in any mining business nor run a mining pool. Canaan’s leadership also satisfied with this business concept which enables Canaan to focus on its core competency.

Actually, Canaan started dreaming about getting listed since 2016, but things were not progressing smoothly. Initially, the company targeted the domestic market and planned to get listed in Shenzhen Stock Exchange. However, the Shenzhen Exchange issued the inquiry letter to the event, which led to the nullification of the listing attempt. In August 2017, the company submitted a listing application on the New Third Board, or NEEQ. But the company withdrew the listing application in 2018.

After hitting the wall several times, the company turned its head to oversea exchanges. Canaan had filed its IPO application in May 2018. At that time, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank were joint sponsors of the Canaan IPO. However, the firm’s IPO filling surpassed its six-month lifespan and lapsed on November 14, 2018.

This time, some industrial insiders have correlated Canaan’s recent fundraising with the upcoming “technology innovation board” in Shanghai. It is a high-tech stock board modeled on the Nasdaq Stock Market in the U.S. Last October, the Hangzhou Office of Finance has launched a “Phoenix Action”, listed 83 key pre-listed enterprises while Canaan Creative also upon the list. All the above shows the firm may continue its IPO journey at the Shanghai Stock Exchange.