Photo/Shetuwang

July 31 (NBD) -- Canaan Creative, the second-largest maker of bitcoin mining rigs, has secretly submitted an application for initial public offering (IPO) with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after it failed to get listed in Hong Kong, Tencent online media Yixian reported, citing a person close to the company.

The miner manufacturer reportedly plans to raise 200 million U.S. dollars through the listing.

Founded in 2013, Canaan Creative primarily engages in blockchain servers production and ASIC microprocessor solutions design. It has developed into one of the three top manufacturers of cryptocurrency miners.

Zhang Nangeng, founder of Canaan Creative, said to National Business Daily (NBD) in an interview in May that miner chips currently constitute the pivot of the company's chip segment, but artificial intelligence (AI) chips could become another major business in the next two to three years. Zhang predicted the company's revenue generated by AI chips could reach tens of millions of yuan this year and will be on par with the income from miner sale in three years.

In May 2017, Canaan Creative raised 43 million U.S. dollars in a Series A funding round, which valued the company at 430 million U.S. dollars at that time. Its valuation later increased to billions of U.S. dollars after its latest round of financing this March in which the firm secured several hundred million U.S. dollars.

In a bid to gain more capital support, the company has been pushing to go public for years.

It first planned to land on the A-share market in June 2016 by acquiring a 100 percent stake of Shandong Luyitong Intelligent Electric Plc that is publicly listed on Shenzhen Stock Exchange. However the deal terminated over regulatory doubts with the validation of the transaction.

Canaan Creative later applied for listing on China's "New Third Board" market in August 2017, which also ended up with failure. The company then filed for an IPO with the Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx) last May, but the application turned lapsed last November.

NBD noticed that the two other leading Chinese bitcoin miner makers - Bitmain and Ebang International - also hit a brick wall in attempts for Hong Kong IPO. Ebang International submitted its application twice last year, respectively in June and December of the year, but neither of the filings was approved by HKEx. This March, the prospectus of Bitmain was removed from application proof list of the Hong Kong stock exchange.

The setbacks in listing encountered by Chinese mining giants reflect the cautiousness of Chinese bourses as profits of mining rigs manufacturers are closely tied with cryptocurrencies, but China hasn't issued any specific regulations on cryptocurrencies and the business could be outlawed and cracked down on, a person familiar with the matter noted.

Email: lansuying@nbd.com.cn