As a banner of Chinese chips, behind the Cambrian incident, it reflects that the factional struggle among senior executives in the chip industry has a huge impact on the company. Chips are an industry with a long investment cycle, but under the impetus of capital, the chip industry is wrapped up in more interests. Even the phenomenon of peers digging into each other's walls and feet and infiltrating each other has disturbed the calm on the surface of the chip industry.
The Cambrian incident is by no means an isolated case, but a microcosm of the undercurrents in the chip industry. The profit-seeking nature of capital has never changed. When chip talent is hot due to scarcity, the talent introduced by enterprises may be a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it can enable enterprises to achieve disruption, but on the other hand, it may also be a secret weapon to destroy enterprises.
The Cambrian incident is not a matter of Cambrian founders' ability and prejudgment of the market, but erupts under the influence of entanglement of interests and even under the influence of invisible big hands.
Recently, the "first share of AI chips" Cambrian issued an announcement that liang jun, the company's core technical backbone and CTO, left his job.
The announcement wiped cambrian market capitalization by 3.6 billion yuan, and the stock price plummeted by 11.14%. And the "infighting" hidden behind the scenes has also surfaced.
CTO Liang Jun fled, and infighting surfaced
Catching up with the good timing, Cambrian seized the outlet of the great development of the industry. In 2017, Cambrian, which had a revenue of only 8 million yuan, quickly became popular with its cooperation with Huawei and received huge attention from the capital market; in 2020, in just 4 years, Cambrian, which was spawned by capital, completed the listing bell and soared.
However, 6 years after its birth and 2 years on the market, the fate of Cambrian is like a roller coaster. At the height of the light, the cambrian market value once reached 119.6 billion yuan, but with the frequent problems such as consecutive years of losses and shareholder liquidations, the former star companies have ceased to star.
Why did cambrianism fall into the predicament it is today? Can you survive the cold winter and usher in a counterattack?
According to Cambrian's announcement, Liang Jun's departure was due to disagreements with the company. As early as February 10, the company was notified to terminate the labor contract.
In fact, there are rumors about Liang Jun's departure in December 2021. In January this year, in a personnel change announcement, Cambrian stressed that Liang Jun has not completely left the company, and the company intends to appoint him as the chief expert of the Forward-looking Chip Technology Innovation Center to continue to engage in technological innovation.
The latest announcement shows that Liang Jun will not hold any position in Cambrian.
Cambrian was reduced from the original 4 core technical personnel to 3, namely Chen Tianshi, Liu Shaoli and Liu Daofu. All three are core members of the Cambrian founding team and are the "Department of Middle Science" within cambrianism.
Liang Jun is a technology bull from Huawei HiSilicon. As the main architect, Liang Jun has completed the architectural design of a number of high-end complex SoC chips, and has produced more than 100 million chips.
Liang Jun's exodus is also regarded as an infighting within the Cambrian "Hisi system" and the "Middle Science System". Intriguingly, in January, when Liang Jun was rumored to have left, 68 cambrian incentive recipients gave up 216,000 shares of stock incentives to leave, which were worth nearly 20 million yuan at the time.
At the same time, on the day of Liang Jun's departure announcement, Cambrian not only announced the promotion of Chen Yu and Zeng Hongbo as deputy general managers of the company, but also attributed 715,000 restricted shares in 2020 to 402 incentive recipients. Among all directors, senior executives and core technical personnel, only Liang Jun has a column of 0.
The confrontation between the "HiSilicon Department" and the "Zhongke Department" is suspected to have gone from offline to online.
Judging from the evaluation of netizens, for Liang Jun, it has been divided into two distinct factions. One faction believes that Liang Jun's decision avoided Cambrian's detours, while the other faction angrily erupted, and Liang Jun's purpose was to bring down Cambrian and was undercover.
Before and after the departure of CTO Liang Jun, all kinds of strange details also confirmed the infighting between the Hisi system and the Chinese science department within the Cambrian Period.
For Cambrian, this is just the tip of the iceberg of the company's development.
In the early days, Cambrian and Huawei achieved mutual success
Throughout the development of Cambrian, this star enterprise of AI chips in the Department of Science and Technology, which was born in 2016, has been controversial.
In 2017, in the first year of Liang Jun's joining Cambrian, he launched an IP licensing cooperation with Huawei, making it a hit.
At that time, Huawei Kirin 970's photo recognition processing hit Apple, and it could recognize 2005 photos per minute, far more than Apple's 889 photos, and this was mainly due to the Cambrian 1A processor equipped with Huawei Kirin 970.
As the world's first commercial terminal intelligent processor, Cambrian 1A integrates 5.5 billion transistors, 2.2 billion more transistors than Apple A10, but at the same time consumes 20% less power, so Huawei Kirin chip has played a beautiful turnaround.
In the following two years, huawei and Cambrian's "honeymoon period" continued, contributing 110 million yuan in revenue in 2018, accounting for 97.63% of Cambrian's total revenue, and before the breakup in 2019, contributed 63.65 million yuan in revenue, accounting for 14.34%.
Huawei's blessing has also made the development of cambrians break through. Before the listing, it has raised 6 rounds of financing, quickly becoming a unicorn enterprise in the field, and after the listing in 2020, Cambrian's account once lay 4.9 billion yuan of cash flow.
Leave Huawei and take a sharp turn?
However, the good times are not long, and in 2019, Based on its own self-developed strategic considerations, Huawei has changed from a partner of Cambrian to a competitor.
From 2017 to 2021, Cambrian has accumulated a loss of 2.883 billion yuan in the past 5 years, and a loss of 847 million yuan in 2021, a further widening to 94.98%.
In this case, shareholders have reduced their holdings, which has also become an important reason for the outside world to look down on cambrianism.
First of all, Yuanhe Origin, on July 23, 2021, the first anniversary of Cambrian listing, the restriction stock lifting period arrived, and the 4.54% of the shares held by the position were immediately liquidated.
A week later, another major investor, SDIC Venture Capital, could not wait to reduce its holdings by 2.80%. On February 22, 2021, Ningbo Hangao announced that it would reduce its 1.82% stake in Cambrian and cash out about 600 million yuan. Only one day later, Suzhou Paleozoic Venture Capital, Ningbo Hangao, and SDIC Venture capital announced their holdings.
At this point, the Cambrian era has yuanhe origin, Ningbo Hangao many shareholders cleared and left. Even investors seem to see no hope and are eager to leave, so is there any hope for Cambrian to rise again?
The industry is upward, can Cambrian survive the harsh winter?
The individual manifestations of the Cambrian period were contrary to national industrial policy. In recent years, the development of the AI chip industry has been booming.
From the national strategy to the local planning, we are striving to create a good policy environment for the development of AI chips. For example, the 2021 "14th Five-Year Plan" and the 2035 Long-term Goal Outline clearly pointed out that during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the new generation of artificial intelligence industry in the mainland will focus on key areas such as high-end chips;
The general environment is good, which is a good signal for Cambrian. Although cambrian has encountered many development problems and is facing more and more challengers, from three aspects, cambrian still has the opportunity to rise.
First, Cambrian R&D investment continues to increase, which is the basic condition for technology to establish enterprises.
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.
Huge investment in research and development funds has enabled Cambrian to accumulate a large number of core technologies. As of December 31, 2021, Cambrian has applied for 2526 patents, including 2463 invention patent applications, 58 software copyrights, and 6 integrated circuit layout designs.
With this technical strength, Cambrian has launched 8 smart chip products in the past 5 years, which can be called "the wild runner on the chip design road".
Today, Cambrian has become one of the few enterprises in the world that has mastered the core technology of intelligent chip and its basic system software research and development and productization.
Second, there is enough cash flow support.
According to public information, by the end of June 2021, Cambrian still has 2.8 billion yuan in cash on its books.
In the chip industry, adequate cash flow means that Cambrian also has a greater chance of surviving this cold winter.
Third, Cambrian has a new track.
In recent years, cambrian due to the characteristics of its products are not strong in versatility, the sales network is difficult to fully roll out, and the difficulty of market expansion has soared. But at the same time, on the TOG side, Cambrian, backed by the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has also gone smoothly.
According to the prospectus, in 2019, 46.7% of Cambrian's revenue came from the Commerce Bureau of Zhuhai Hengqin New District, and 18.3% came from Xi'an Fengdong Yixiang Technology Co., Ltd., who are also the first and second largest customers of Cambrian.
In 2020, Cambrian won 300 million yuan of Nanjing Intelligent Computing Center Project (Phase I) Intelligent Computing Equipment Procurement Project; in December 2021, Cambrian once again announced that it won the bid for the infrastructure construction project of intelligent computing center of Jiangsu Kunshan High-tech Industry Investment and Development Co., Ltd., with an amount of 500 million yuan.
Perhaps in the short term, Cambrian has little hope of turning losses into profits, but in the chip industry of "investment front, income post", products from the beginning to the large-scale mass production need a relatively long process, we should give Cambrian time.
For Cambrian, the opportunity is always there, but whether it can be seized or not needs time to test. And the departure of executive Liang Jun this time is the first "spring cold" encountered by Cambrian in 2022.
(This article was originally from Blue Technology, and must indicate the source of the reprint.) Image source: Daisaku)