Bitmain, the market leader in mining hardware, has been able to raise additional investor funds before its planned IPO. Most important player: The investment company Sequoia Capital China with an investment of 400 million US dollars.

It’s been less than a week, most recently openly as company founder Wu Jihan with an IPO of his company flirted. With a $ 400 million investment, the investment company Seqouia Capital has now joined Bitmain, reports China Money Network.

Bitmain is estimated at twelve billion US dollars

The investment now estimates the value of the mining company at a whopping $ 12 billion. The same goes from insider reports that are available to local media. This number coincides with last week’s CEO Jihan Wu’s assessment. Bloomberg still estimated the company value at 8.8 billion US dollars. The basis for this estimate was a comparison with other chip manufacturers such as Nvidia or MediaTek.

IPO end of the year?

Meanwhile, Bitmain is still covered. So far, the chip manufacturer has neither commented on Sequoia funding nor has it specified its stock market plans. Commenting on Bloomberg, company president Wu hinted that he would prefer Bitmain to a stock exchange in which dollar-denominated investments are possible. This should facilitate the cash out of early investors like Sequoia. In addition to overseas markets, Wu specifically names the Hong Kong Stock Exchange here.

Also, the local insider reports cited by the Chinese Money Network mention Hong Kong as the first choice for an IPO. So the chip manufacturer allegedly wants to submit an application for admission to the Hong Kong stock exchange in September. In addition, the company wants to reach a market capitalization of 30 to 40 billion US dollars.

Bitmain relies on its monopoly position in the mining business. The manufacturer of ASIC chips and mining hardware dominates the industry with 75 percent market share. The same applies to the bitcoin mining itself: Bitmain operates BTC.com and AntPool, the two largest mining pools for Bitcoin. Thus, the company currently combines more than 40 percent of the total rate of the network on itself.

Recently, the company was exposed to allegations of secretly operating monero-mining. Bitmain boss Jihan Wu denied the rumors.