Crypto Mining Chip Manufacturer Nano Labs Applies for U.S. IPO

Nano Labs, a Chinese crypto mining chip manufacturer, recently submitted an application to the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for an initial public offering (IPO) on the Nasdaq to raise $50 million.

Nano Labs was founded by Kong Jianping, former co-chairman of Canaan, and its main income is derived from mining machine sales. According to the company’s prospectus, AMTD Global Markets, Maxim Group and UP Fintech Holding are its joint underwriters.

According to Tianyancha, Nano Labs is registered in Hong Kong and its two major shareholders are Kong Jianping and Sun Qifeng. The former is the Chairman and CEO, while the latter is the Vice Chairman. They both once served as executives of Canaan, a chip design company listed on the Nasdaq.

Zhejiang Haowei Technology Co., Ltd. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nano Labs in China. Haowei was founded in 2019 and is headquartered in Hangzhou and is a distributed chip developer. The company’s focus is to provide high-bandwidth and high-performance special processor chips and solutions for distributed computing processes, core networks, artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, video codecs and other fields under the metaverse.

Kong Jianping was also an investor of Canaan. He joined the company as co-chairman and led Canaan to list on the Nasdaq. In August 2020, Kong Jianping and Sun Qifeng ceased to serve as co-chairmen and members of the board of directors due to the expiration of their tenure. Kong then set up the new company Haowei which he wanted to focus on the incubation and investment of technology-driven projects in the fields of blockchain and AI.

Nano Labs’ products are mainly used to mine cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethernet and Filecoin. According to the prospectus, Nano’s revenue mainly comes from the mining solution of virtual currency Grin. In 2020, all its revenue came from Chinese customers. In order to expand overseas sales, a subsidiary was set up in Singapore last year.

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According to the prospectus, the revenues of Nano Labs in 2020 and 2021 were 2.13 million yuan ($317,370) and 39.44 million yuan respectively, and net loss was 37.7 million yuan and 175 million yuan respectively. Nano Labs plans to use the funds raised from this IPO for the research and development of more advanced ASIC chips, intelligent NIC, visual computing chips and meta-computing network platform Ipolloverse, and establish a manufacturing plant.