China's chip "Whampoa Military Academy" will receive another IPO, and Xiaomi and Huawei will jointly invest

Ichuangyebang original

Author丨Barry

Editor丨 and anecdote

Title picture丨Picture worm creativity

As the core component of mobile intelligent terminals, RF front-end chips are the basis of terminal communication and have always been known as the crown jewel of analog chips.

However, due to the high technical difficulty and long research and development time, the four foreign manufacturers of Skyworks (Skyworks), Qorvo (Verizon), Broadcom and Murata of Japan control nearly 60% of the global RF front-end market.

In China, at the same time that Feiqiao Technology and Huizhiwei broke through the science and technology innovation board, Onruiwei also officially launched its listing.

It is reported that the initial public offering of shares and listing guidance filing of Beijing Ongrui Microelectronics Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Ongruiwei"), a domestic RF front-end chip company, was registered and accepted by the China Securities Regulatory Bureau.

Behind Ongruiwei, there are many well-known investment institutions such as Hubble Investment, Xiaomi, Lenovo Venture Capital, and Walden International under Huawei.

Previously, Xiaomi and Huawei have jointly invested in high-performance analog chip company Naxin Micro, vehicle communication chip manufacturer Yutaiwei and other companies, and achieved IPOs.

It is worth noting that Qian Yongxue, chairman of Ongruiwei, once came from the Zhanrui department, known as the "Whampoa Military Academy" in China's chip industry.

According to the statistics of Venture State, there are more than 30 startups that have come out of the Zhanrui department. Not only that, even Chen Datong, managing partner of Yuanhe Puhua, and Wu Ping, founding partner of Wu Yuefeng Capital, are also from the Zhanrui family.

Qian Yongxue, chairman of Ongruiwei, source: Ongruiwei public account

Xiaomi and Huawei jointly invested in an IPO

Qian Yongxue, the head of Angruiwei, is an "industry veteran" with 20 years of experience in microwave radio frequency.

In 1999, he graduated from the Department of Physics of Hunan University and was successfully admitted to the Institute of Microelectronics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, majoring in microelectronics and solid-state electronics.

After graduating with a master's degree, he joined RDA, which is known as the pioneer of RF chips in China.

In the 2G/3G era at that time, China's communication chip companies began to intervene, relying on China's huge market advantages, not only cultivating excellent mobile phone processor chip manufacturers such as Huawei HiSilicon and Unigroup Zhanrui, but also giving birth to a number of excellent RF communication chip companies.

However, it is a pity that domestic manufacturers account for 95% of 2G/3G shipments; In terms of 4G, 30% of shipments are accounted for, but the products are mainly low-end, and sales account for only 10%.

Trying to change this status quo is also an important reason why Qian Yongxue decided to start a business.

In 2012, Yang Qinghua and Qian Yongxue co-founded Zhongke Han Tianxia. In August 2019, the chairman of Zhongke Han Tianxia changed from Yang Qinghua to Qian Yongxue, and the company name was changed to Ongruiwei.

Since its establishment, the core product line of Hongrui Micro has expanded to 6 categories and more than 400 chips, with an annual shipment of more than 1 billion chips. Including: 2G/3G/4G/5G full range of RF front ends, filters, IoT SoC chips, MCUs, analog signal chains and power management chips.

It is reported that the products of Ongruiwei have entered well-known brands and solution providers such as Honor, Xiaomi, Samsung, Motorola, ZTE, Lenovo, Transsion, Huaqin, Longqi, Wingtech, etc., and have also broken through new customers such as OPPO and vivo in the past year.

According to the analysis of Ruibao, since its establishment, Onruiwei has experienced 9 rounds of financing, including Huawei's Hubble Investment, Xiaomi Yangtze River Industrial Fund, Lenovo Venture Capital, Walden International and other well-known institutions.

In terms of equity structure, the counseling documents show that Engruiwei currently has no controlling shareholder, the actual controller is Qian Yongxue, and signed a concerted action agreement with Meng Hao and Ouyang Yi, and the three people together control about 33.97% of the company's equity.

Deciphering the "Whampoa Military Academy" of China's chip industry

Unigroup Zhanrui is known as the "Whampoa Military Academy" of the chip industry, and a batch of chip entrepreneurs have been born here.

Among them, it has given birth to two listed companies with Zhanrui genes, namely "the first stock of baseband chips on the science and technology innovation board" Aojie Technology and the "first share of TWS on the science and technology innovation board" Hengxuan Technology.

In 2001, Wu Ping, Chen Datong, Ji Jin, Fan Renyong and Zhang Xiang jointly founded Spreadtrum Communications, with Wu Ping as CEO and Chen Datong as CTO.

RDA was founded in 2004 by Dai Baojia and Wei Shuran, and was listed on the NASDAQ exchange on November 11, 2010.

On July 19, 2014, Unigroup announced the completion of the acquisition of RDA for US$907 million, and later merged with Spreadtrum to form the current Unigroup.

As a veteran of RF in the GSM era, RDA has broken the monopoly of European, American and Japanese companies in the fields of mobile phone communication, wireless connection and broadcast communication.

According to the data, RDA was the only integrated circuit supplier in China that could successfully design and mass-produce a full range of digital and RF products including digital baseband, RF transceiver, power amplifier, RF switch, Bluetooth, wireless, FM radio, etc., which can be described as the first domestic baseband.

At that time, RDA and Spreadtrum had accumulated a large number of chip R&D and management talents in the fields of digital/analog circuits, RF systems, power amplifiers, signal processing, etc. Since then, many of them have either started businesses or become investors, continuing to shine on the chip track.

According to the statistics of Venture State, there are more than 30 startups coming out of the Zhanrui department, most of which are concentrated in the field of radio frequency, followed by artificial intelligence.

For example, Aojie Technology was founded in 2015 by Dai Baojia, the former founder and CEO of RDA, who exited after Unigroup's acquisition of RDA.

After its establishment, Aojie Technology has successively acquired Alphean in South Korea, Jiangsu Smart IC and Marvell Mobile Pass Division. With this, the company has a complete baseband platform research and development capabilities.

According to the analysis of Ruibao, Aojie Technology has completed nine rounds of financing and has been sought after by dozens of institutions such as Alibaba, Sequoia China, Hillhouse Venture Capital, IDG Capital, China Net Investment, Yuanhe Puhua, TCL Venture Capital and so on. The company has been listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board in February 2022, and its current market value has exceeded 28 billion yuan.

Let's look at Hengxuan Technology.

Liang Zhang was previously President of RDA and Senior Vice President of Engineering. Since 2015, Zhang Liang has become the chairman of Hengxuan Technology, and Zhao Guoguang, vice president in charge of operations, was also the vice president of production and operation of RDA.

The company, which develops audio chips for TWS headphones and smart speakers, has achieved a turnaround in only 3 years since its establishment, with a net profit of more than 60 million yuan in 5 years since its establishment.

From its establishment to its listing, Hengxuan Technology took only five years, setting the fastest speed for domestic integrated circuit design companies to go public.

"Investing in Hengxuan is mainly because of the team."

As an early investor in Hengxuan Technology, Liu Yue, founding partner of Yuanhe Puhua, once told Venture Bang, "Zhang Liang is an undergraduate student majoring in microelectronics at Tsinghua University, and when he met him, he was the president of RDA, giving people the feeling that he can 'get things done'; in addition, wearable devices are the trend of the times, so the development of Hengxuan can be described as 'the right time and place'." ”

"China's chip companies have now solved the problem of survival and entered the stage of defining products." The super product definition ability of Zhang Liang's team has left a deep impression on investors.

In addition, Liyou Liyou, former chairman of Spreadtrum and chairman of RDA, founded Blue Ocean Intelligence, Zhao Lidong, who had held various positions in RDA and Unigroup, founded Fangyuan Technology, former Unigroup COO Wang Jingming founded Siche Technology, Unigroup CTO Qiu Xiaoxin founded AiXin Yuanzhi and so on.

At the same time, Zhanrui also appeared two important investment bigwigs in the chip industry.

More than two decades ago, Chen was the co-founder and first CTO of Spreadtrum Communications and brought the company to the NASDAQ listing, and is already a successful semiconductor entrepreneur. But he gradually realized that there is no shortage of semiconductor entrepreneurs in China, but VCs who invest in semiconductors.

In 2009, Chen Datong transformed and established Huashan Capital. Since 2014, Chen Datong has co-founded Tsingxin Huachuang (the predecessor of Yuanhe Puhua), with a historical management fund of more than 10 billion yuan, a cumulative investment in more than 150 semiconductor projects, and dozens of listed companies.

Wu Ping was also a co-founder of Spreadtrum Communications and served as its first CEO. In 2011, he co-founded Wuyuefeng Capital with Pan Jianyue and Li Feng, and invested in listed companies such as GigaDevice Innovation and Anji Microelectronics.

Write at the end

An investor familiar with Spreadtrum once summed up two reasons for its success:

First, hang a sheep's head to sell dog meat, starting from domestic substitution. From the history of world industrial transfer, the opening of new markets began with imitation. When you first enter a new market, you must wait, which is a matter of survival for startups. There is still hope behind the market, and there is a dead end in the market such as the front of the market;

The second is to truly return to China to start a business and be grounded. Relying on the extremely fast response speed and innovation ability of small companies to carry out rapid iteration, to achieve the counterattack of fast fish eating slow fish.

The market strategy adopted by companies such as Zhuosheng Micro and GigaDevice is to surround the market in rural areas: start from China, slowly make brands, and achieve Asia, Africa and Latin America, and then to Europe and the United States.

Why can Zhanrui run so many entrepreneurs? I believe they also know the truth of this.