Meituan Logo (Image source: Titanium Media App editor)
After the "old classmate" left his post due to illness for more than four months after starting a business, Meituan CEO Wang Xing made a move.
After the Hong Kong stock market on June 29, Meituan (03690. HK) announced on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange that the buyer had entered into a transaction agreement (i.e. an overseas share purchase agreement and a domestic share transfer agreement) to acquire all interests in the group beyond the entire light years for US$285 million (approximately RMB 2.065 billion).
Specifically, the total consideration consisted of approximately US$234 million (RMB1.688 billion) in cash, approximately RMB367 million in debt commitments, and RMB1 in cash received by Wang Huiwen. As of June 29, the Group's net cash position outside Light Years totaled approximately $285 million. Upon completion of the acquisition, Meituan will hold a 100% interest in Lightyear Outside Group.
Meituan said the board did not expect the acquisition to have any material financial impact on the Group's earnings, assets and liabilities.
Only four months after starting a business, the old owner bought it at a high price. So far, Lightyear has become the fastest acquired entrepreneurial project in domestic history, and this is also the largest public M&A transaction in China's AI big model and generative AI field.
In addition, this also means that Meituan has entered the field of AI large models under the ChatGPT boom.
Four months after its establishment was sold, Wang Huiwen ended the road of large-model entrepreneurship
Lightyear Away Group was founded in 2023, and the company's founder and CEO Wang Huiwen was a co-founder of Meituan.
Inside Meituan, Meituan CEO Wang Xing is "Brother Xing" and Wang Huiwen is "Lao Wang", they are classmates at Tsinghua University and roommates in the same dormitory. In July 2001, they obtained a bachelor's degree in electronic engineering from Tsinghua University.
After the establishment of Meituan, Wang Huiwen served as Meituan's co-founder and executive director, responsible for Meituan's real-time delivery and some new businesses, and was the "number two person" of the Chinese tech retail giant. On September 20, 2018, Wang Huiwen and Wang Xing joined hands to bring Meituan to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and successfully listed it.
In December 2020, Meituan announced that Wang Huiwen retired from day-to-day management and continued to serve as a director and work on Meituan's strategic planning, organizational development and talent development.
On the left is Wang Xing, and on the right is Wang Huiwen (Source@Visual China)
Wang Huiwen, 44 years old this year, has become one of the well-known entrants in the recent hot AI big model track.
On February 13, 2023, Wang Huiwen released a recruitment information, announcing the establishment of General Artificial Intelligence (AGI) company Beijing Lightyear Beyond Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as "Lightyear Beyond") to build a Chinese version of OpenAI. Wang Huiwen said that it is planned to personally contribute 50 million US dollars, valued at 200 million US dollars, individuals do not own shares, funds account for 25% of the shares, and 75% of the shares are used to invite top research and development talents. According to reports, the first round of investors outside Lightyears include ZhenFund, Source Code Capital and others.
On March 24, Meituan announced that Wang Huiwen had been transferred from an executive director to a non-executive director of Meituan because she wanted to devote more time to other business and personal matters, effective March 25. After the transfer, Wang Huiwen will give up her super voting rights and gradually convert all of his Class A ordinary shares into Class B ordinary shares of the Company on the basis of converting one Class A share into one Class B share. After the transfer, Wang Huiwen will continue to serve as a member of the Nomination Committee of the Board.
For Wang Huiwen's entrepreneurship, "old classmate" and "good brother" Wang Xing also publicly expressed support. On March 8, Wang Xing said in the circle of friends that he would participate in the A round of investment of Wang Huiwen's startup "light years away" in his personal capacity and serve as a director.
"The big AI model makes me excited about the huge productivity that will be created, and the impact it will have on the world in the future. Lao Wang and I have been walking together on the road of entrepreneurship for nearly 20 years, and since he is determined to embrace this big wave, then I must support it. Wang Xing once said.
However, just over four months after founding and taking charge of Lightyear, Wang Huiwen was exposed to health problems and suspected depression.
On June 25, Meituan issued an announcement that Wang Huiwen had submitted his resignation as a non-executive director, a member of the nomination committee of the company's board of directors and an authorized representative of the company due to personal health reasons, effective June 26 this year. Following the resignation of Wong Wai Man, Mr. Mu Wing Kwan, an Executive Director, has been appointed as an authorised representative with effect from 26 June. The nomination committee will be composed of Leng Xuesong and Shen Xiangyang, and Leng Xuesong will continue to serve as the chairman of the nomination committee.
In fact, as early as May this year, Wang Huiwen was found to have health problems, symptoms suspected of depression, and has recently temporarily left work and is in a state of recuperation.
After the announcement, Lai Binqiang, a former Meituan executive and one of Meituan's founding team, posted a circle of friends: "I am accompanying Lao Wang in the hospital, there are professional doctors and nurses here, please rest assured." For the next period of time, you need to follow the doctor's instructions to retreat and recover, and everything will be fine. ”
Now, Wang Huiwen's big model venture has settled and handed over the company to his former owner, Meituan, and he himself has ended this entrepreneurial road.
According to the announcement on June 29, Meituan acquired 100% of the shares of Lightyear Group founded by Wang Huiwen, including Lightyear and first-class technology, for a total price of 2.065 billion yuan, including two parts of the equity of entities outside domestic and overseas Lightyear. After the completion of the acquisition, Wang Xing and Sequoia Global Managing Partner, Sequoia China Founding and Managing Partner Shen Nanpeng became directors.
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Among them, the consideration for the acquisition of entities outside of overseas light-years was US$234 million, including a payment of 0 yuan to Wang Huiwen's contact AI Age, a payment of 5 million US dollars to co-investors and Wang Xing's contact entity Qimai, and a payment of 28 million US dollars to Sequoia China, which holds 2.44% of the shares, and about 201 million US dollars to other sellers holding 20.41% of the shares.
The terms of the purchase include the buyer's purchase of securities issued and issued outside Lightyear at an overseas consideration without any liens, and the holder of the warrants agrees to return and agrees to cancel each overseas Series A warrant held by the holder of the overseas lightyear without any lien. Upon closing, Meituan will hold 100% of all issued share capital outside of overseas light-years.
The acquisition portion of entities outside of domestic light-years, including RMB1 for Wang Huiwen and RMB367 million of capital injection (the difference between available funds and the amount of outstanding convertible bonds), is used to repay the creditors of each outstanding convertible bond.
It is worth noting that the main asset outside of domestic light-years is its equity interest in first-class technology. In April this year, Lightyear announced the acquisition of First-class Technology, a large language model company, which is approximately 46.52%, 34.63% and 18.84% owned by Mr. Yuan Jinhui and Brilliant Partnership, respectively, while Brilliant Partnership is 94.42% and 5.58% owned by Mr. Yuan Jinhui and Mr. Zhao Zhen respectively. According to the announcement, in 2021 and 2022, the audited book value and net asset value of first-class technology will be about 566,900 yuan and 15.59 million yuan respectively; The loss before and after tax was 19.18 million yuan and 22.7182 million yuan.
In addition to state-of-the-art technology, the unaudited book value of domestic light-years is RMB348 million. Therefore, the book value of first-class technology is about $21 million.
After the completion of the acquisition, financial results outside of lightyears (including outside of overseas lightyears and outside domestic lightyears) will be consolidated into Meituan's accounts. As at the date of this announcement, no other vendor holds more than 5% of the total issued share capital other than light years abroad.
Currently, the team size outside of Light-years is around 70 people.
Meituan said that the current management and technical teams outside of Lightyears have a high level of experience developing deep learning frameworks. By acquiring leading AGI technology and talent beyond Lightyear, Meituan has the opportunity to strengthen its competitiveness in the rapidly evolving AI industry and better fulfill Meituan Group's mission.
According to reports, after the completion of the merger, Meituan will support the Lightyear team to continue to explore and research in the field of large models.
How is entrepreneurial depression treated?
Titanium Media App learned that Wang Huiwen's circle of friends was still stuck on June 5 this year, when he denied reports of a new round of $230 million in financing and a pre-investment valuation of $1 billion outside of light-years. Wang Huiwen said that the reported financing amount and valuation are inaccurate, and thanked everyone for their attention.
Before the acquisition was announced, Wang Huiwen's health problems attracted market attention.
It is reported that as early as mid-May, Wang Huiwen's suspected depressive symptoms began to emerge, and then he was medically diagnosed with "depression" and recently began to be hospitalized.
In fact, as one of the most common mental illnesses, depression is a normal response to difficult situations, and depression is also a very complex disease, which requires a lot of research to find out the cause. Known causative factors include genetic characteristics, hormone levels, environmental triggers, certain medications, the impact of major illnesses, grief and confusion from the death of a loved one, physical or mental abuse, living with someone with major depressive disorder, etc.
Even the most capable people feel great stress, emotions such as overwhelm, restlessness, anxiety, pain, pessimism, loneliness, exhaustion, and even guilt for having these emotions. If you cannot get timely treatment and guidance, it may lead to symptoms such as low mood, distraction, memory loss, etc., and even strong self-harm and even suicidal tendencies in severe cases.
Entrepreneurship has an impact on psychology and brain power, stress, anxiety, depression, and distress are common psychological states under the high-intensity work of entrepreneurs, and it is very likely to suffer from depression. As Silicon Valley investor Ben Horowitz wrote in Entrepreneurial Hardships: "In more than 8 years as CEO, only 3 days have been good times, and the rest is almost all difficulty." ”
"Randian" once conducted a survey of 5,000 entrepreneurs: more than half of the entrepreneurs worked more than 60 hours a week, they felt that they were getting farther and farther away from family and friends, and they were very lonely and anxious; Seventy percent are under high pressure; More than 1/4 of entrepreneurs want to give their families a better life, yet 70% of them actually have a decline in income; 7% of entrepreneurs even felt that entrepreneurship affected their sex life.
Among the group of entrepreneurs, there are not a few who have experienced depression, Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei, Sohu founder Zhang Chaoyang, Zhenge Xu Xiaoping, have all revealed that they had depression during their entrepreneurship. Of course, they all managed to come out and eventually recover.
So, how can depression be treated?
Wang Wei, director of the Depression Treatment Center of Beijing Anding Hospital affiliated to Capital Medical University, pointed out that the three major areas of drugs, psychotherapy and physical therapy are the current mainstream depression treatment methods.
1. Drug treatment: Drugs are one of the easiest and most effective ways to treat, of course, drugs inevitably have some side effects. However, the side effects of commonly used depression treatment drugs are relatively small, and they are also predictable and manageable.
2. Psychotherapy is divided into many schools, such as psychoanalysis, integration, cognitive mind, cognitive behavior, and many other schools, so they are all useful and have their own applicable populations.
3. Physical therapy, including what we call neuromodulation techniques, such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, as well as electroconvulsive therapy, light therapy, exercise therapy, music therapy, listening to songs... It is also effective for depression, and then aerobic exercise, jogging, etc. have a certain alleviating effect on depression, or some people like to do anaerobic exercise, in fact, we have studies that show that aerobic exercise has a better relief effect on depression than anaerobics.
In addition, depressed patients can also take health care products, including antidepressants based on melatonin receptors in the clinic, which are clearly effective. At the same time, depression is not a simple psychological phenomenon, many patients will also be affected to varying degrees of physiology during the onset of the disease, so they need to be treated by drugs.
It is worth noting that Titanium Media App found that Su Hua, the founder of Tencent Investment and Kuaishou who were previously rumored to have invested in Lightyear, are not in Meituan's newly disclosed director list, and Meituan has not disclosed whether Yuan Jinhui and Zhao Zhen, founders of first-class technology, will enter the new company after the merger.
In addition, it is also more coincidental that this week was the largest acquisition of the generative AI track to date: MosaicML, an overseas large-model startup with a team similar to the size of light-years away, was acquired by big data unicorn Databricks for a total price of $1.3 billion (about 9.406 billion yuan). Therefore, the AI big model track seems to be ushering in a new round of mergers and acquisitions. (This article was first published on Titanium Media App, author | Lin Zhijia)