BRIEF: Black Sesame buys 60% of SoC products maker for $68 million

Autonomous vehicle chipmaker Black Sesame International Holding Ltd. (2533.HK) said on Wednesday it has agreed to acquire existing and newly issued shares of Eeasy Technology Co. Ltd. that would give it 60% of the company for 478.2 million yuan ($68.3 million). Of that total, 40.4% of the stake would come in exchange for its contribution of 20.2 million yuan to boost Eeasy Tech’s registered capital. It would purchase another 19.6% from Eeasy Tech’s existing shareholders for about 458 million yuan.

Upon completion of the deal, Eeasy Technology will become a non-wholly owned subsidiary of Black Sesame. Eeasy develops high-cost-performance and low-power AI system on chip (SoC) products for automotive intelligence and on-device AI applications. It reported a loss of about 88 million yuan in 2024, narrowing from a 113 million yuan loss in 2023.

“The directors believe that the acquisition will enable the group to provide a full range of high, medium and low-end automotive-grade computing chips, offer full-scenario solutions for intelligent vehicles, and at the same time promote the group’s products to expand into a wider range of robotics and AI+ applications, providing a full range of AI inference chips and solutions,” Black Sesame said.

The company announced in June thatit had reached a deal to acquire a company with a similar description to Eeasy Tech, but did not disclose the name at that time.

Black Sesame shares fell when the market opened on Friday, but later reversed course and were up 1% at HK$19.48 in mid-afternoon trading. The stock is down about 30% from its IPO price of $28 in August 2024.

By Doug Young

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