Bitmain, the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency company, is reportedly seeking another $1 billion in funding, which will value the ASIC manufacturer at $15 billion, or the approximate value of technology giant AMD.

Bitmain Seeks An Additional $1 Billion In Funding

As per a report released by Tou Tiao, a Chinese news source, Bitmain is seeking investors for yet another pre-IPO funding round, but this time to the tune of $1 billion. This aspiration for yet another financing round comes after Sequoia Capital led a $400 million round made in early June of this year.

While the contributors to that round valued the mining ‘giant’ at $12 billion, this time Bitmain is looking for a $14 billion pre-investment valuation and a $15 billion value following the potential influx of investor capital.

A $15 billion company valuation would put the hardware manufacturer just under the $16 billion value of all of the publicly traded AMD shares. For those who are unaware, AMD is one of the most prominent semiconductor firms in the world, who has also benefited from the run-up of the cryptocurrency industry over the past year.

These valuations don’t come unwarranted, with the report from Tou Tiao also noting that the firm had sold $2.3 billion worth of ASIC chips in 2017, raking in $1.25 billion in net profit from last year’s operations. With these staggering figures, Bitmain is now the second largest integrated circuit (IC) developer in China, falling behind only to Huawei, one of the foremost smartphone manufacturers on the worldwide scale.

If this financing round is confirmed and successful, it is likely that it will be one of the firm’s last financing rounds before the upcoming initial public offering, which would allow Bitmain stock to be publicly traded on the Hong Kong stock exchange.

According to a report from China Money Network, an English publication covering Chinese news, Bitmain is seeking to hit the public markets with a valuation of $30-$40 billion sometime later this year.

Bitmain Rapidly Expands With New Operations And Investments

This means that the firm’s value will need to rise by two-times over the next two to three months, which may sound like an impossibility, but for an economic powerhouse like Bitmain, there is a glimmer of hope.

Bitmain’s ambition for the $30 billion valuation level can be seen with a series of investments the firm has made into a smattering of firms. Earlier this year, Bitmain led a $3 billion funding round of Circle, which was recently backed by American investment giant Goldman Sachs. With this investment into Circle, the two firms will be collaborating to create a stablecoin alternative pegged to the U.S. dollar.

As reported by LiveCoinWatch earlier in July, Bitmain recently made an investment into the firm behind the Opera Browser, fittingly named Opera. The Chinese mining firm contributed $50 million to Opera in a private placement round just before Opera was set to go public.

Moreover, earlier this year, Bitmain revealed that it would be making a foray into the artificial intelligence market, and has since started creating ASIC chips for AI applications. Jihan Wu, the billionaire CEO of the firm stated that the sale of AI chips could provide the firm with 40% of its revenues within the next few years.

It is clear that the firm is doing its best to reach a substantial valuation before the IPO, which is set to occur later this year.