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Cambrian announced that the stock price plummeted by 11.4%, and the market value evaporated by 36 billion.
Because this announcement is officially announced: the company's core technical backbone, CTO Liang Jun, resigned.
Moreover, the "executive discord" and "internal disagreement" in the previous market rumors have also been confirmed to some extent, and the official admitted in the announcement that Liang Jun's reason for leaving was "differences with the company".
The high-level turmoil in the Cambrian Period and the departure of CTO Liang Jun are not without warning, as early as last December.
However, in another announcement of personnel changes in January, Cambrian stressed that Liang Jun had not completely left the company.
The company intends to appoint him as the chief expert of the Forward-looking Chip Technology Innovation Center and continue to engage in technological innovation.
In the latest announcement, it is clear that there is a complete parting of the ways.
Upon his termination of his post, Mr. Liang Jun will no longer hold any position in the Company.
This official announcement has attracted a lot of attention in the industry, not only because Liang Jun is a cambrian core technical personnel, but also because he is a big bull from Huawei HiSilicon.
Liang Jun and his people
Born in 1976, Liang Jun holds a master's degree in communication and information systems from the University of Science and Technology of China.
During his time at Huawei, Liang Jun started as an ordinary engineer in 2000 and successively served as an engineer, senior engineer, chief engineer, technical expert, and senior technical expert.
He has been responsible for network chip architecture design, mobile phone SoC chip design and team management.
Liang Jun has been serving as deputy general manager and chief technology officer since 2017, serving as deputy general manager and chief technology officer, responsible for the overall technology and product research and development of AI chips, and the management of the R&D team, and has played an active role in product innovation and R&D system construction.
Cambrian's first 7nm AI training chip, the Siyuan 290, was also launched during his tenure.
It can be said that he is a comprehensive talent in the chip field.
Regarding the impact of this personnel change, Cambrian said in the announcement:
The departure of Mr. Liang Jun will have a certain impact on the company's R&D management.
The company has established a complete R & D system, formed a professional R & D team, reserves a wealth of patented technology, Mr. Liang Jun's departure will not affect the company's technological innovation, will not have a significant adverse impact on the company's overall R & D strength.
But for Cambrian, Liang Jun's departure is just the tip of the iceberg in the company's development status.
This AI chip star company originating from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with AI core unicorns out of the circle and quickly landing on the science and technology innovation board, has made poor business progress after listing, and its stock price market value is far from that of the IPO.
The departure of liang jun, the core technical backbone, I don't know whether it is the end of this cold winter situation, or the beginning?
CTO is temporarily vacant
After Liang Jun left his post, cambrian core technical personnel were reduced from 4 to 3.
In addition to the founder and current general manager Chen Tianshi, Liu Shaoli and Liu Daofu are also members of the founding team.
Among them, Liu Shaoli led the team to develop terminal intelligent processor IP, cloud intelligent chip and acceleration card, and Liu Daofu was responsible for the overall guidance of edge intelligent chips and acceleration cards.
All three are also from the Institute of Computing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
After Liang Jun left office, Cambrian did not designate a new CTO candidate.
As can be seen from another previous announcement of personnel changes, the corresponding change is the appointment of two new technical deputy general managers from within, in charge of the two major businesses of edge and cloud.
Chen Yu, a bachelor's degree in communication engineering from Zhejiang University, joined Cambrian in 17 years and was previously the head of the edge product line.
Zeng Hongbo, ph.D. from the Institute of Computing, Chinese Academy of Sciences, joined Cambrian in 18 years, and was previously the head of the cloud training product line and the senior director of the distributed software department.
The announcement also disclosed the latest overall situation of Cambrian R&D personnel, the number of R&D personnel has maintained growth, and the proportion of R&D personnel has been at a high level.
How has such a re-researched and developed enterprise been doing over the years?
Cambrian in the winter
When Liang Jun joined the company in 2017, it was the time when Cambrian and Huawei HiSilicon began commercial cooperation.
According to the prospectus submitted by Cambrian in 2020, in 2017 and 2018, Company A (Huawei HiSilicon) ranked first among Cambrian's major customers, and the resulting revenue accounted for more than 95%.
At that time, the products launched by Cambrian were also famous in the outside world.
For example, the Cambrian 1A processor, the "world's first commercial deep learning special processor" launched at the beginning of its establishment in 2016. For example, in 2018, the Siyuan 100 was launched in the field of cloud smart chips and acceleration cards...
On July 20, 2020, Cambrian was officially listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, becoming the "first ai chip stock" of the Science and Technology Innovation Board.
Although it has continued to lose money, Cambrian still set an opening increase of nearly 290% on the first day of listing, and its market value once exceeded 100 billion yuan.
But the cold snap may come sooner than expected.
Just 1 year later, cambrian market capitalization has been cut down.
All the way down, it has also been interpreted by the market as a lack of cambrian stamina after breaking up with Huawei.
Behind the market value slash, Cambrian has not been able to stop the loss.
According to Cambrian's latest performance report, Cambrian's total operating income in 2021 was 721 million yuan, an increase of 57.12% year-on-year; the net profit loss attributable to the mother reached 847 million yuan, an increase of 94.98% over the same period of the previous year.
Previously, from 2017 to 2020, Cambrian's annual revenue was 7.8433 million yuan, 117 million yuan, 444 million yuan and 459 million yuan, respectively; the net profit loss attributable to the mother was 381 million yuan, 0.41 billion yuan, 1.179 billion yuan and 435 million yuan.
Cambrian said that the main reason for the loss was the increase in share payments and sales expenses in research and development expenses and management expenses.
According to the data, from 2017 to 2020, Cambrian's research and development expenses were 29.8619 million yuan, 240 million yuan, 540 million yuan and 768 million yuan, accounting for 380.73%, 205.18%, 122.32% and 167.41% of the company's revenue.
Behind the high investment in research and development, the market competition faced by Cambrian products is becoming more and more intense.
According to the "2021 Semi-annual Report" released by Cambrian, at present, edge smart chips and acceleration cards have accounted for 60.74% of Cambrian's revenue.
However, in this business, when Facing the market competition of NVIDIA A100, V100, and Huawei HiSilicon Ascend 910, Siyuan 290 faces the risk that future market promotion and customer development will not be as expected due to reasons such as "the sales network has not yet been fully rolled out" and "there is a certain gap in the software ecosystem".
The "2020 Annual Report" pointed out that its terminal intelligent processor IP licensing business fell by 82.96% compared with 2019, mainly because it was difficult to develop large customers with the same business volume in the short term after the cooperation between Cambrian and Huawei HiSilicon was over.
In addition, in 2018, 2019 and 2020, the total sales amount of the top five cambrian customers accounted for 99.95%, 95.44% and 82.11% of the operating income, respectively, and the customer concentration was high.
External pressure continues, and now the core technical personnel are openly leaving, and the rumors are solid...
Where will the first ai chip of the science and technology innovation board go, once again marked a question mark.
As of press time, Cambrian's stock price was reported at 71.88 yuan, down 11.14%, and the market value evaporated by about 3.6 billion yuan.
Latest Announcement:
http://static.sse.com.cn/disclosure/listedinfo/announcement/c/new/2022-03-15/688256_20220315_1_vw62juym.pdf
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