Dr. Tang Qiang, Chairman of Zhixun Innovation: "The Heart of a Child of China Core" Entrepreneurs

Humble gentleman, gentle as jade. Dr. Tang Qiang, chairman of Zhixun Innovation, always maintains a kind of self-confidence of idle walking, and always brings people a feeling of spring breeze in getting along, this semiconductor expert with more than 90 US patents, just founded Zhixun Innovation Technology (Wuxi) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhixun Innovation") in October last year, and obtained a 100 million yuan angel round of financing in December of the same year.

Why has Zhixun Innovation become the darling of the capital market, and what kind of Chinese chip road will he embark on? Let's take the answer from the interview with Dr. Tong.

Dr. Qiang Tang

Twenty years of searching for a moment

Looking back on the honor has been waited for

In middle school, Dr. Tang developed a strong interest in physics and chemistry, and then was admitted to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering of Tsinghua University, and achieved the highest score in Jiangsu Province.

In the early autumn of 1998, Dr. Tang, who had just graduated from Tsinghua University with a master's degree, went to the United States to continue his studies and obtained a doctorate in materials and engineering from Stanford.

Dr. Tang said the five years spent at Stanford were a "transition phase" from schooling to industrial research and development. In the process of Stanford's doctoral studies, the close connection between the school and the science and technology innovation company enabled Dr. Tang to have an in-depth understanding and personal experience of the industry, and completed the transformation from academic to industrial.

Be aware of the difference between school and work environments. In the learning environment of the school, the knowledge is relatively fixed, and the setting conditions are relatively simple, but in the work, you need to take the initiative to find out the required conditions and pay attention to careful verification. The demands on initiative in the work are very high.

In the industry for more than 20 years, Dr. Tang has always adhered to the proactive spirit of exploration, whether in the research and development of chip projects such as Micron or Marvell and other european and American manufacturers, he can be at ease, perfectly complete the work in hand, and constantly achieve breakthroughs, and eventually grow into an expert in the field, obtain more than 90 US patent certificates, and lead a larger and larger team to strive for excellence, explore new chip architecture, and promote new standards of performance.

What is more worth mentioning is that after returning to China in 2018, Dr. Tang led the team to overcome difficulties and achieve breakthroughs in many technical key issues of domestic 64-layer, 128-layer and above 3D NAND products, and made significant contributions, and has been selected as a class A expert of the National Major Talent Program, an expert of the Hubei Provincial Hundred Talents Program, and was hired as a part-time professor of the School of Microelectronics of Huazhong University of Science and Technology.

The market is breaking the ice

My generation can't stop

As a chip type that occupies half of the domestic semiconductor industry, memory has always been one of the key battlefields of the IC industry. From the perspective of market scale, memory chips are the world's largest integrated circuit products, the most important basic core chips for information systems, and the largest amount of integrated circuit products imported by the mainland.

At present, the international mainstream memory chip giants have built four major barriers to technology, capital, production capacity and talents, and the overall market has shown an oligopoly situation, but with the obstruction of the United States in recent years, the raging of the new crown epidemic, the sudden chip famine sweeping the world, solving the chip shortage, and creating a completely independent and controllable Chinese core, which is a topic in front of the talents in the national chip industry, and it is urgent to break the ice.

"The United States used to be the monopoly of chips, but now the U.S. share of the chip market has dropped from a peak of 37% to the current 12%, and may decline in the future."

According to Dr. Tang, in the current complex international chip environment, in the face of increasingly fierce competition in the global semiconductor industry, Chinese chip companies should accelerate localization substitution, strive to manufacture high-end products with world-class standards, and establish a full-process, completely independent and controllable chip industry chain.

Thousands of rivers and mountains are always concerned

Committed to manufacturing "China Core"

In 2018, at a critical juncture when the domestic chip industry was pushed to the cusp of the storm, Dr. Tang, who had a pure heart, declined the high-salary invitations of many international manufacturers, resolutely returned to China to join Yangtze River Storage as chief technology officer, and led the team to carry out a series of memory chip research and development and testing.

"Our generation of life under the red flag, grew up in the spring wind, because of the rapid development of the country to have the opportunity to go abroad to learn more advanced technology and technology, now the motherland needs more talents to carry the banner of 'Chinese core', then I, as one of them, must come back to contribute a force." When asked why he chose to return to China, Dr. Tang said.

For the chip industry he is engaged in, Dr. Tang also has a deep understanding: China's memory industry started late, the current domestic memory industry in the world market industry proportion and influence are still relatively small, insufficient technology accumulation, there are many difficulties. However, the state has given strong policy support to the semiconductor industry, the domestic memory market is very large, and high-quality talents in memory-related fields are also well stocked.

"The development of the industry needs a good ecology, which includes the environment of innovation, the protection of intellectual property rights, the cultivation of talents and the opening of the innovation-capital-industrial chain." On the whole, Dr. Tang is very optimistic about the future of "China Core".

The East Wind suddenly entered the game

Thousands of sails and hundreds of boats are slowly springing

In August 2020, the State Council promulgated the "Several Policies to Promote the High-quality Development of the Integrated Circuit Industry and the Software Industry in the New Era", with the increase of national special policies, with the introduction of relevant industrial policies of local governments, and with the more intervention of capital, the chip industry has taken advantage of the spring breeze of rapid development.

After full discussion with two old friends, Gong Yi (former senior vice president of Yangtze River Storage Marketing and Sales Center) and Wang Chao (former general manager of TEF Semiconductor), who are also veterans of the storage industry, Dr. Tang resolutely decided to leave the original company, hoping to give full play to their expertise through a new entrepreneurial platform, contribute more strength to the country's memory chip field, and inject more vitality into the semiconductor industry.

In October 2021, Dr. Tang and the core team members came to Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, a picturesque national integrated circuit industry town, and founded Zhixun Innovation Technology (Wuxi) Co., Ltd. In December of the same year, it obtained a 100 million yuan angel round of financing, and the company is currently actively raising a Pre A round.

Why can a company that has only been established for half a year be so favored by the capital market?

The strong technical strength of Zhixun Innovation is the reason why many capitals are optimistic. According to Dr. Tang, Zhixun Innovation is led by academicians of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and initiated by the leading figures in the memory chip industry in the United Nations, and the core personnel have experience in the research and development and management of international large factories and successful cases of domestic independent innovation.

The company has key capabilities such as independent research and development, process landing, production and operation, market development, and operation and management. At the same time, the team members are all Chinese citizens, who can truly realize the autonomy and controllability of core technologies.

The importance of memory chips for the development of the mainland is self-evident, its research and development difficulty, talent training cycle, investment scale, etc. are higher than other industries, making and doing a good job of mainstream memory chips is the "industrial long march" of the mainland integrated circuit industry breakthrough, I believe that Zhixun Innovation will be able to walk out of a transcendent road with Chinese characteristics for the mainland mainstream memory industry based on the huge domestic market demand and strengthening independent research and development investment.