Chip "star companies" frequent personnel changes, scrambling for scarce industry talents comparable to "auctions"

In the capricious global epidemic, the semiconductor industry chain has experienced an unprecedented change, the supply chain shortage and the strong market demand have formed a great contrast, and the market scale has ushered in a period of rapid development of strong opportunities and strong risks.

Under such changes, China's semiconductor industry chain has also ushered in a boom in localization, entrepreneurship and investment, and the recent frequent departures of chip company executives and technical backbones have made this market more restless.

On the evening of March 14, Cambrian (688256, SH), the "first share of AI chips", announced that Liang Jun, the company's core technical personnel, has recently handled relevant resignation procedures for him due to differences with the company, and Liang Jun will no longer hold any position in the company after leaving. Affected by this news, Cambrian stock price has been hit hard, as of the close of the 16th, each share was reported at 65.01 yuan, the latest market value of 26 billion yuan, the deepest decline in the past two days touched 25%.

At present, the Shanghai Stock Exchange has issued a regulatory work letter on the resignation of Cambrian core technical personnel, involving listed companies, intermediary institutions and their related personnel.

However, in the eyes of industry insiders, in the chip industry where resources are scarce but "hot money is not reduced", even if it is a star chip company, it is not an easy task to "retain" the core technical backbone. Han Xiaomin, general manager of Jiwei Consulting, told reporters that there are internal problems with the departure of core technical talents, but from an external point of view, there is a lot of money in the market, people with core technologies come out, investors do not ask what products to do, first give three hundred million. "That's how some investment institutions play."

Core technical personnel leave

Founded in March 2016, Cambrian focuses on the research and development and technological innovation of artificial intelligence chip products, which are used in consumer electronics, data centers, cloud computing and many other scenarios. On July 20, 2020, Cambrian officially landed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, becoming the first domestic "AI chip stock", the first day of stock growth reached 290 yuan per share, in the fourth trading day of listing, the company's stock price rose to 297.77 yuan, the market value broke through the 100 billion mark.

Since then, Cambrian stock prices have continued to decline. On the evening of February 25 this year, Cambrian released a performance express report showing that the operating income for the whole year of 2021 was 721 million yuan, an increase of 57.12% year-on-year; the net profit attributable to the mother was 847 million yuan, and the net profit attributable to the mother in the same period of the previous year was 435 million yuan, an increase of 94.98% over the loss of the same period of the previous year.

For the performance loss, Cambrian said that the main reason is due to the increase in share payment and sales expenses in research and development expenses and management expenses. In the latest announcement, after Liang Jun's departure, cambrian core technical personnel currently have three remaining, all of whom are core members of cambrian founding team.

Regarding Liang Jun's departure, Cambrian believes that it will have a certain impact on the company's R&D management, but it will not affect the integrity of the company's intellectual property rights. However, in the eyes of the institution, the contribution of the inventors of the leading enterprises in the chip industry to the company cannot be underestimated.

Through the search of the global patent database of Wisdom Bud, it can be seen that Cambrian and its affiliates currently have more than 2,100 patent applications, and among the top ten inventors in terms of patent applications, the proportion of core technical personnel contribution is outstanding. During Liang Jun's tenure in Cambrian, patent applications were mainly concentrated in related technical fields such as data processing, neural network models, and computing devices.

From the perspective of resume, Liang Jun previously worked for the Beijing Research Institute of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. and Huawei HiSilicon, and was successively responsible for network chip architecture design, mobile phone SoC chip design and team management. In 2017, he entered cambrian and served as deputy general manager and chief technology officer, responsible for the overall technology and product development of AI chips, and the management of the R&D team.

It is not easy to find a suitable replacement in the short term. Zhao Yan, general manager of Shenzhen Yiweixun Information Consulting Co., Ltd., told reporters that the core talents should refer to those who are familiar with the management of customer projects and have the ability to coordinate the resources of all parties, as well as senior leadership talents with a certain industry reputation and professional authority, and the loss of this talent will have a greater impact on small and medium-sized chip companies.

"For large companies, the reserve of technical personnel is relatively strong, if it is only the loss of individual executives and related teams, it will not have much impact." It can be seen that in recent years, whether it is the salary of the IC industry and the attraction of entrepreneurial innovation, the robbery and pull of talent resources are more intense, and the flow of talents is still more common in the semiconductor industry. Zhao Yan said.

Capital fever accelerates the flow of high-end talents

In addition to Cambrian, since entering 2022, the core technical personnel of many chip listed companies have also changed.

According to Wind statistics, Dongxin shares and core original shares disclosed the announcement of the departure of relevant core technical personnel in January this year. Launched on December 10, 2021, TEX focuses on the development, design and sales of small and medium-capacity general-purpose memory chips. From the perspective of time, the departure time of the core technical personnel is only two months after the listing of Dongxin shares.

On January 13, the company announced that Qian Zhehong, vice president and core technical personnel of the company, recently submitted his resignation to the company's board of directors for personal reasons, resigned as vice president of the company, general manager of the design IP division and has completed the resignation procedures.

SMIC once said in a social responsibility report that the company's employee turnover rate in 2018 was 22%, and SMIC's employee turnover rate in Shanghai was 52.2%. Although there has been a decline in 2019, there is still a churn rate of 17.5%, and Shanghai is still the main front for loss.

Han Xiaomin believes that in addition to the management problems of some companies themselves, the external capital is also one of the main reasons for the rise in the turnover rate of chip talents.

According to the statistics of american semiconductor media Semiconductor Engineering, in the last month of 2021 alone, a total of 54 start-up companies in the semiconductor field have obtained a new round of financing, and the detailed and verifiable financing amount has exceeded 15 billion yuan, and 40 of the 55 companies that have obtained financing are Chinese companies.

"The traditional chip track bubble has been almost crowded, but there are still some track patterns that are undecided, and there are no head companies that have run out, which means that there are still many opportunities." Han Xiaomin told reporters that on some cutting-edge tracks, chip talents with core technology accumulation are favored, and the project may not be decided, and there will be investment funds coming in.

Wang Mundi, a partner at Asiacom Consulting, once said at an industry exchange meeting that it is too common to raise 100 million yuan, and the angel round of many chip companies is not to say 100 million, or even several hundred million is possible. There are companies that have been established for less than 2 years, and even the situation of raising two or three billion yuan has emerged, and too many companies have been warmly welcomed by the capital market. "Some chip companies bid for a rare module of chip talent, which can open an auction, which is such an exaggerated thing."

The head company "salary increase" robbed people

The huge gap directly leads to the enterprise robbery war. The secretary general of the Shanghai Integrated Circuit Industry Association once pointed out that due to the rapid development of the industry and the huge talent gap, domestic enterprises are trying to attract talents.

According to the "White Paper on Talents in China's Integrated Circuit Industry (2019-2020 Edition)", it is estimated that by 2022, the demand for talents in the whole industry in the mainland will reach about 744,500 people, with a huge gap; only 6.53% of the practitioners have master's degree or above, and there is a serious shortage of experienced industry experts and applied technology research and development talents.

For the head company, both the design side and the chip manufacturing side of the giant, are currently through the salary increase to retain high-end talent.

It is reported that TSMC's fixed salary in 2021 has been raised by 20%, and it will raise another 8% salary in April this year, higher than the level of 3% to 5% in previous years. For this news, TSMC said that it will routinely raise salaries in April every year, but there is no public salary increase figure yet. Lithography machine equipment ASML also launched a wave of salary adjustments in July last year, and raised salaries again at the beginning of this year, according to agency statistics, since July last year, the company's salary increase has reached 15% to 19% in half a year.

MediaTek will soon pay employee dividends totaling NT$13.237 billion, with an average of NT$1.1 million to NT$1.2 million per employee, the highest in the calendar year.

According to the "2022 Talent Trend Report" released by talent solutions company Hudson at the beginning of this year, the salary increase in the chip industry will be the first in 2022, exceeding 50%, followed by medical and big health.

"As long as he is willing to move, each pit can be recruited at a very high price, and the average salary increase is about 50%. It is completely the turnips that I want to move to choose, which pit I want, how much income I want to increase. Song Qian, managing director of Hudson Recruitment Business China, said that the positions that led the salary increase list in 2022 were smart car chips and advanced semiconductor chip research and development, with an increase of more than 50%, and consumer application developers, big data scientists, and business intelligence analysts rose by more than 40%.

However, from the perspective of the specific type of talent gap, there is still a serious shortage of experienced semiconductor industry experts and application technology research and development talents.

The above white paper pointed out that since the current industrial development trend, there is a structural imbalance in integrated circuit talents. For example, there is a shortage of leading and high-end talents in the mainland, the attraction of talents is insufficient, the support for personnel training teachers and practical training conditions is insufficient, the integration of production and education needs to be enhanced, and the phenomenon of poaching between integrated circuit enterprises is widespread, resulting in frequent flow of talents.

"In addition, what seems to be a boom is actually a low-level in-volume, a repetitive competition to fight a price war." Some people in the industry have shown another layer of concern, in the international market, countries compete to support the semiconductor industry, concentrate resources on mature leading enterprises in their countries, support these enterprises to expand production capacity, international mergers and acquisitions, bigger and stronger, in contrast to the domestic market, resource dispersion may continue to lead to the loss of talent of mature semiconductor companies.