Reporter| Zhou Qi
Editor| Jiang Yuyu
A chip manufacturer has received investment from Li Ka-shing for three times.
In October, Neterner received a US$48 million Series B financing led by Li Ka-shing's fund Victoria Harbour Investment, followed by upstream and downstream enterprises in the industrial chain such as Foxconn, Lite-On Technology, and ADATA Technology.
Together with the previous A+ and A++ rounds, Victoria Harbour has been injected three times in a row.
Founder Liu Juncheng's noble reputation does not stop there, he met Dong Mingzhu on a TV show, listened to his advice to return to China to start a business, and received order support from Gree.
The manufacturer, which focuses on the research and development of edge AISoC special processors and provides terminal AI computing solutions, has reached a valuation of 800 million US dollars (about 5.5 billion yuan).
Landing technology
The digital transformation of urban construction is accelerating, and more and more devices are becoming AI-based in more vertical terminal fields.
Edge AI is one of the workhorses behind it. It refers to the situation where large data volume calculation is required but the real-time performance is high, and there is no need to detour to the cloud center for computing. These scenarios are often limited to a certain range, such as a car, a factory, a store.
At the end of October, Naineng released a new generation of artificial intelligence chip KLM5S3, which will be applied in urban security, intelligent driving, terminal equipment, various wide-angle lens processing scenes and other fields.
For example, HDR for security applications, equipped with KLM5S3 solutions, supports Clear HDR (High Dynamic Range) function and does dual-channel HDR processing.
In the captured image, the image sensor will automatically set a higher gain in the dark and a lower gain in the light, acquire three images at the same time, and output them to the KLM5S3 for processing.
Simply put, objects moving at high speed can also take images without artifacts and chromatic aberrations.
In addition, based on its high-energy ISP algorithm and six-axis gyroscope, the image stabilization function is realized, and the hardware large-angle distortion correction function is embedded to effectively correct the dynamic image and improve the viewing experience.
In terms of DMS, it can intelligently analyze the driver's face, eyes, posture and other detailed features, identify whether he is tired driving, and make early warning reminders; And through the analysis of vehicle license plate, color, shape, etc., identify large cars, small cars, automatic vehicles, motor vehicles, pedestrians, plan driving paths, and help drivers avoid collisions.
Choosing to start from the "end", Nexus has its own considerations.
"The ecology of the giants has been built, and Nexus is not competitive." Liu Juncheng said in an exclusive interview with 21CBR, "Technically, if the NPU (embedded neural network processor) is made on the cloud, there is a chance to compete, but the architecture (if) does not have time to accumulate, it will still lose to them." ”
Dong Mingzhu once told him that technology should be landed, and "it is nonsense if it does not land."
"She is an industrialist, she has seen a lot of AI companies, and she feels that they are not sound and have no real products, so Sister Dong has always told us to give priority to products." Liu Juncheng said.
From the beginning, Neeron set its development goal in the terminal field - from the Internet of Things to open the market first, and then gradually advance from the end to the cloud, just like "rural areas surround cities".
"It's not enough to just listen to the report, to go to the front line to feel the 'process of bullets flying', I myself will participate in technical discussions and run customers on the front line." He stressed.
Nexus' R&D team is a proud part of Liu Juncheng - the team has senior seniors who have worked at Bell Labs in the United States for nearly 20 years; and his doctoral classmates, colleagues from Samsung and Qualcomm; Later, one-fifth of the recruits came from the Department of Electronics of Tsinghua University.
NeNeng has KL5, KL6, KL7 three series of chips, respectively used in smart home and smart hardware, home security, action cameras, panoramic cameras, driving recorders, smart cities.
Taking the "Nexus 3D face recognition solution" as an example, it can be used in a variety of lighting environments such as dark night, normal indoor lighting, outdoor sunlight, etc., and dynamically capture face information to achieve rapid recognition within one second, such as twins, mask wearing, high-definition video, and the recognition accuracy is 99.99%, and the anti-counterfeiting is extremely strong, recognizing 2D photos and 3D headmolds.
In building access control, this solution can quickly and accurately identify and optimize the passage experience in a huge face database, which is convenient for enterprises and building management. Traditional door locks and home cat-eye visual cameras have poor user recognition, easy to break, and the face algorithm can be unlocked in milliseconds to improve face recognition.
Neron has reached cooperation with OFILM, Deschmann, Gree Electric Appliances, AAEON and other application fields.
A "gamble"
Before founding Nedeng, Liu Juncheng was well-known in the industry.
He has worked for Qualcomm and Samsung R&D centers, participated in Bell Labs, the US Government Intellectual Property Agency, NASA and other projects, and is a technical reviewer for many internationally renowned academic journals.
In 2015, he set his sights on the AI track. AI was in its infancy, and no one knew how far the future would go.
The "kick in the door" that really allowed Liu Juncheng to create Endurance came from a friend.
"My friend wanted to start a business so badly that he quit his job after getting the money and clients and came to live with me in the United States. Later, he found out that he had been fooled, so he had to live in my house and joked that I was responsible. Liu Juncheng recalled.
"I gave him half of my salary, thinking about who could spend whom."
As a result, in 2016, Neeron was founded in the United States. "I can't consume him, this industry is not worried about finding a job, I simply resigned to accompany him to start a business." Liu Juncheng brought chip design experience and partners he met at work to start in the semiconductor industry.
Should the company's focus be on China or the United States?
"Sister Dong is a very national person and very bold." Liu Juncheng recalled, "She said that no matter how well she did in the United States, she was contributing core technology to other countries, and if you came to China, I could help you." ”
Implementation has gone through some twists and turns.
As a multinational company, the core team members of NeNeng have lived in the United States for a long time, are confident in the potential of the local market, and are reluctant to return to China.
In order to make the team recognize China's technology and market, Liu Juncheng exchanged colleagues from China and the United States, stayed for 2-3 months at a time, and sent American employees to Zhuhai and Shenzhen to work and live with workers in customer factories.
"Only by understanding the daily life and needs of our customers can we make something more useful." He said.
Dong Mingzhu also fulfilled his promise, and NeNeng partnered in the field of smart home is Gree.
Carefully selected
Liu Juncheng hopes that Nai can take the necessary steps with funds and become a leader after the international economic situation stabilizes.
"Just like Google in the Internet bubble and Facebook in the European debt crisis, they all made the right layout in the crisis." Liu Juncheng brought out the key point of the layout - automatic driving.
Kenwood is a Japanese local electronics company, including car navigation systems, audio, mobile communication equipment, etc., is the main supplier of Toyota Motor in Japan.
In addition to recording the driving situation, the new generation of driving recorder DRV-EMN5700 also has a safe driving assistance function, which can be used as L2 level autonomous driving, equipped with two Neerng chips - M5S and KL520.
M5S supports maximum 5M@30FPS, 120db wide dynamics, starlight-level low illumination and hardware panoramic fisheye correction, etc., and can adapt to complex light scenes such as overexposure and overdark.
The KL520 provides AI capability support for the end side, which can recognize people, vehicles, signs, and obstacles to meet the needs of ADAS (advanced driver assistance system).
While actively landing, on the other hand, technology upgrades.
In July last year, Rising Energy Resistance acquired Ridge Technology, which has leading ISP technology, system-on-chip (SoC) and semiconductor IP for more than $11 million, and its products have been used by companies in the United States, China and Japan in the security, automotive and consumer fields.
"The merger with Ridge Technologies will enable us to expand its terminal smart chip business to include autonomous driving (AV) and electric vehicles (EV)." Liu Juncheng explained, "We will continue to look for companies with complementary businesses and added benefits to grow together. ”
The choice of corporate structure and financing partners was also carefully selected.
This year, Lai Youming served as the chief financial officer of Naineng. He led SMIC's IPO and helped launch two companies, Daqo New Energy and 51 Talk, in the United States.
"Of course, he is looking for him in the hope that (Nexus) will have an IPO plan, and we will carefully observe the international situation and take action at the best time." Liu Juncheng told reporters.
Investment partners, "each one is not picked randomly".
In the previous Series A financing, Liu Juncheng said that Qualcomm and Qijing Optoelectronics have mobile phone industry resources; Alibaba has new retail and online sales resources; China Development Capital has accumulated deep experience in the field of electronics and has invested in ASUS; Zhongke Chuangda has accumulated in drones, automatic vehicles, smart homes and other fields.
In the B round of financing completed in October this year, in addition to Foxconn, there are also new investors Lite-On Technology and ADATA Technology.
Liu Juncheng's logic in choosing investors is, "Foxconn and emerging American car manufacturers have long-term mutual trust, helping Naneron to switch to electric vehicle companies after deploying traditional car companies; Lite-On-Tech's optoelectronic technology and ADATA memory solutions are the areas of follow-up cooperation. ”
Edge AI chips have come to seize the market, and Neeron hopes to quickly replicate its existing mass production experience to different national markets.