The APEC summit in San Francisco is coming, and AI continues to rise! Can Huawei's AI chips play? Huawei's AI concept stocks, who can sing the real show?

  Value Line | produce 

    Hotspot | Column

Little Gold| author

Bian Jiang| edit

Value line guide

This Friday, the hot wind direction of A-shares was cut so quickly and resolutely.

Nvidia has just revealed that it will supply special AI chips to the Chinese market, and the Huawei sector, which has soared recently in A-shares, fell back on Friday.

On the other hand, the U.S. stock Nvidia rose for 8 consecutive days, and rose another 2.95% on Friday night to close at $483, only one step away from the all-time high of $502 three months ago.

Next week, the APEC summit in San Francisco will be held, and the high-level dialogue between China and the United States will be held directly, and the economic and trade relations between the two countries will once again become the focus of the market.

AI is undoubtedly the next biggest and hottest outlet in the investment world, Nvidia and Microsoft in the US stock market are in the limelight, can China's Huawei fly against the wind?

Huawei's concept stocks, which have been popular since October this year, especially Huawei's chips and Huawei's AI concept stocks, who has more stamina and can sing the real show? The value line in this issue focuses on it.

It's officially announced!

According to the official statement of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at the invitation of US President Joe Biden, the leaders will go to San Francisco from November 14 to 17 to hold a China-US summit and attend the 30th APEC Economic Leaders' Informal Meeting.

It can be seen from the official wording that Biden has issued two invitations, first for the meeting of the heads of state of China and the United States, and then for APEC.

Obviously, Biden also withstood all difficulties and came to talk to us about cooperation with a high-level formal meeting of heads of state. No way, at this stage, no one can leave anyone.

For the United States, the most urgent one is U.S. stocks and the other is U.S. bonds; For China, the most urgent one is investment, and the other is export.

In any case, the impact of this Sino-US summit on Sino-US relations is positive. This is a major positive for the economic development of China and the United States.

Some market participants said that, first of all, there were some expectations before the summit, which are now confirmed but not over; What to expect from the next step. Sino-US economic and trade relations and trade environment have confirmed that they have bottomed out, which is a major positive for enterprises involved in Sino-US trade. Among them, especially companies involved in some trade fields that were previously affected by the Sino-US trade war are directly benefiting. In addition, there may be hype about any areas of cooperation between the two sides in this meeting, even marginal topics.

Second, the financial war will slow down, the risk of debt will be reduced, the risk of hot war will be reduced, and the outflow of funds will also be slowed down; Such a turn can easily form a large level bottom. In the case of a better environment, the probability of a bottom reversal of a company with its own fundamentals will increase.

How good is Nvidia?

Before the leader's visit, Nvidia said that it would bypass the US government's sanctions on the 16th of this month and provide three special AI chips to China, which can be mass-produced and supplied by the end of the year.

Although it has been "castrated" twice, many industry insiders said that in terms of comprehensive performance and ecological advantages, Nvidia's new special version still has a lot of advantages in front of domestic goods.

On the other hand, the U.S. stock Nvidia rose for 8 consecutive days, and rose another 2.95% on Friday night to close at $483, only one step away from the all-time high of $502 three months ago.

It is worth mentioning that Nvidia will announce its third quarterly report on the 21st of this month, North American time, and industry analysts generally believe that it is likely to exceed expectations. Nvidia's management is also very optimistic about the short-term prospects, mainly in data centers, which will continue to benefit from the promotion of AI development layout.

Due to the potential of AI, there is currently strong demand for its data center platform from a variety of customers across a wide range of industries. CFO Colette expects this to continue into next year. Colette expects Nvidia's revenue in the fiscal third quarter to reach $16 billion, implying a year-on-year increase of 170% and a quarter-on-quarter increase of 18.46%, mainly driven by data center, gaming and other businesses.

In the graphics card market, Nvidia is left with only two main rivals, AMD and Intel. AMD will launch the MI300 this year, which is benchmarked against NVIDIA's GH200 superchip, to focus on the AI training market; Intel is stepping up the research and development of artificial intelligence chips, and has recently acquired a series of AI acceleration chip companies.

Large customers also don't want to continue to be "cut leeks" by NVIDIA, after all, NVIDIA's gross profit margin is as high as about 70%. Google, Apple and Microsoft are all developing their own chips.

But all this is just a long-term worry, and Nvidia is currently drinking the sweet liquor of AI. In a recent earnings call, Huang said, "The company has an incredible amount of orders in hand. ”

Can Huawei's AI chips fly against the wind?

Recently, the latest news came out that Baidu ordered 1,600 Ascend 910B AI chips for 200 servers. By October, Huawei had delivered more than 60% of its orders to Baidu. iFLYTEK also frequently stands for Huawei, and iFLYTEK said: The capabilities of Huawei's Ascend 910B have basically reached the level of NVIDIA A100.

How good can Huawei AI chips be?

According to some accounts, the Huawei Ascend 910 has surpassed the Nvidia A100 in some paper data. The Ascend 910 is designed for training scenarios and represents the strongest computing power of the Ascend series of AI chips.

According to a recent research report by Everbright Securities, the Ascend 910 has a half-precision computing power of 320 TOPS and an integer precision computing power of 640 TOPS, which is more than twice that of NVIDIA's previous generation product V100 and slightly exceeds the Nvidia A100 80GB PCle version.

Are you sure?

According to some media, the Ascend 910 is clearly labeled as a NPU (Neural Network Processor) rather than a GPU, and may not be effective in some scenarios, such as scenarios with frequent algorithm and model changes, or scenarios with extremely high real-time requirements, such as autonomous driving and industrial control. For large-scale model business, GPT-3 cannot be run on the Ascend 910 because the Ascend 910 does not support 32-bit floating-point computing, which is currently almost always required for large-scale model training.

However, Huawei's AI chips are also evolving, and the latest Huawei Ascend 910B has been upgraded to support 32-bit floating-point single-precision computing, which is enough for general graphics processing computing, deep learning, large models, and other fields. However, for scientific calculations that need to be processed with a large range of numbers and require accurate calculations, such as computational chemistry, molecular modeling, fluid dynamics, etc., FP64 double-precision calculations still need to be supported.

According to the "Caijing" magazine: industry insiders estimate that in terms of single-card performance, Huawei's products are currently able to reach 80% of Nvidia A100's inference performance and 70% of training performance. However, in practical application, there is still a significant gap between the product and NVIDIA.

The report also said that the core pain point of Huawei is not the performance gap, but the scope of adaptation. Because Nvidia started early, Huawei is in a state of catch-up and does not have an advantage in the market competition.

NVIDIA's position in the field of GPU and high-performance computing chips is difficult to shake in a short period of time. According to IDC data, in 2022, China's AI accelerator card (open market) shipments will be about 1.09 million, of which Nvidia has a market share of 85%, Huawei has about 10%, Baidu has about 2%, and Cambrian and Suiyuan Technology are both 1%. Among domestic manufacturers, Huawei's market share is far ahead, but it is still far behind Nvidia.

It is worth affirming that although domestic AI chips have not yet reached the top level in the world, they have been able to replace overseas competitors to a certain extent.

Huawei's Ascend 920 chip is also worth looking forward to. The Ascend 920, originally scheduled to be launched in 2021, has been significantly delayed due to the U.S. sanctions imposed on Huawei in 2019. Earlier this year, it was reported that the Ascend 920 chip, which is said to be comparable to NVIDIA's H100 chip, may be available in the near future.

Huawei's AI concept stocks, who can sing the real show?

Some industry insiders pointed out that from the perspective of economic indicators, the procurement cost of domestic servers is high and the ease of use is relatively poor. But from the perspective of the development of the industrial chain, this is a step that must be taken. Only by buying and using it first can domestic chips become easy to use.

Previously, due to the actual performance of the chip and the sanctions imposed on Huawei, the shipment and sales of the Ascend 910 chip were limited. However, since the beginning of this year, Huawei has been focusing on maturing the Ascend ecosystem, and there has been a significant increase in both the company's investment and the actual orders it receives.

In the A-share market, companies in the Ascend server field are undoubtedly the most concerned, and the company plans to acquire Huakun Zhenyu's high-tech development, after the share price has gained 11 daily limits, and has risen 411% this year.

According to industry insiders, among the A-share Huawei AI server concept companies, priority can be given to server companies with local state-owned shares. Backed by local state-owned assets and with good resource advantages, it is conducive to expanding channels and obtaining orders, expanding Huawei's computing industry ecosystem, and making up for Huawei's shortcomings in the scope of adaptation.

At present, Ascend partners such as Huakun Zhenyu, Yangtze River Computing, Shenzhou Kuntai, and Xiangjiang Kunpeng have all obtained local state-owned equity participation. The listed companies involved include: High-tech Development, Fiberhome Communications, Tuowei Information, Sichuan Changhong, etc. Except for Sichuan Changhong, the proportion of other listed companies holding shares in Ascend is relatively high. However, Sichuan Hongxin, a subsidiary of Sichuan Changhong, has built the Tiangong series of AI servers based on Ascend.

(Source: Guohai Securities Research Report)

Several Ascend companies are not listed companies, and the value line has compiled their performance in recent years based on public information (only the financial report data of listed companies or official media reports):

Huakun Zhenyu: From January to September 2021, 2022 and 2023, the operating income will be 1.086 billion yuan, 3.424 billion yuan and 3.949 billion yuan respectively, and the net profit will be 11 million yuan, 43 million yuan and 47 million yuan respectively (unaudited).

Yangtze River Computing: Founded in 2020, its revenue has soared 30 times in 3 years, and its market share has entered the first echelon. In 2021, the output value of Yangtze River Computing reached 800 million yuan, and in 2022, this figure is expected to exceed 1.5 billion yuan.

Shenzhou Kuntai: According to Digital China's 2022 annual report and public information, the company's information innovation business revenue scale is nearly 2 billion, a year-on-year increase of 76%, of which artificial intelligence servers contribute about 10% of information innovation revenue.

Xiangjiang Kunpeng: In 2020, Xiangjiang Kunpeng has received orders of about 600 million yuan and confirmed revenue of 240 million yuan. According to "Red Net", the sales of the project will exceed 2 billion yuan in 2021. In 2022, Xiangjiang Kunpeng products accounted for more than 90% of Hunan's market share, with a year-on-year increase of more than 30%.

Founded on December 18, 2020, Kunpeng on the Cloud has expanded its business in more than two years, with cumulative sales of more than 1.8 billion yuan.

From public information, it can be seen that among several companies, Huakun Zhenyu has the highest revenue, Xiangjiang Kunpeng, and Yangtze River Computing rank high, and the corresponding companies are High-tech Development (plans to acquire 70% of Huakun Zhenyu's equity), Sichuan Changhong (indirectly holds 2.42% of Huakun Zhenyu's equity), Tuowei Information (holds 70% of Xiangjiang Kunpeng's equity), and Fiberhome Communication (holds 87% of Changjiang Computing's equity).

In addition, according to the previous announcement of China Telecom's AI computing power server order, Huakun Zhenyu won the first bid.

In addition, Radio and Television Wuzhou, a subsidiary of Guangdian Yuntong, is one of Huawei's 11 Kunpeng partners and one of the 14 Ascend AI strategic partners.

Another line worth paying attention to is the optical module:

According to the list of Huawei's 130 core suppliers circulating on the Internet, Huawei has 2 optical module suppliers, namely Accelink Technology and Huagong Technology (a subsidiary Huagong Zhengyuan).

However, how much optical module companies can benefit from it depends on the specific situation of Huawei's server explosion.

Related companies are ranked in terms of gains this week

In the long run, for domestic servers represented by Huawei, the future is still in a period of rapid development. Recently, Zhang Dejiang, chief expert of Huawei's optical system, said that the current global demand for intelligent computing will double every three and a half months, leaving a huge market space.

However, it should also be noted that whether it is Nvidia or Huawei, there are some stocks with high valuations in the short term, which will test investors' ability to screen and choose the right time.

annex

1

Billion Provincial Governor Zhu Congjiu

Source: City Bureau

In September 2009, 44-year-old Liang Xueqin began to serve as a supervisor of Ningbo Yinzhou Commercial Bank.

In the following years, Liang Xueqin's career rose steadily, and her position in the industry became higher and higher.

On August 7, 2021, Liang Xueqin's position in the bank was changed from supervisor to director and served as deputy secretary of the bank's party committee.

According to the employees of Yinzhou Bank, Liang Xueqin usually only takes a position there and rarely comes to work, but her annual profit is even as high as tens of millions of yuan. This sparked discontent among the bank's internal staff, who began to make joint reports, which lasted for several years.

But the report letter has been in vain.

It's just because Liang Xueqin's husband is called Zhou Jiangyong, the former deputy head of Yinzhou District, Ningbo City, and later a member of the Standing Committee of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee and secretary of the Hangzhou Municipal Party Committee.

According to a local financial industry person, because she is Zhou Jiangyong's wife, Liang Xueqin's business is too easy. What others can't do in a year or two, she can do it with a phone call.

Once, Liang Xueqin asked the director of the finance bureau of a district in Ningbo to take care of the bank business. The other party actually offered to pay the salaries of all civil servants in the district to Liang Xueqin's bank.

The husband is in politics and the wife and children are working as executives in financial institutions, and this kind of family is not uncommon in the country. Jiangsu and Zhejiang, which have a prosperous economy, are no exception.

In this model, the husband uses his political influence to solicit business for his relatives, while his wife or children earn high salaries through market-based means, often as much as tens of millions of dollars a year.

Power and money are combined in this way, which seems to be legal and compliant, but it is on the edge of gray.

Zhou Jiangyong is like this, and Zhu Congjiu may be the same.

On the afternoon of May 4, 2023, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission announced that Zhu Congjiu, a member of the party group and vice chairman of the Zhejiang Provincial Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, is suspected of serious violations of discipline and law, and is currently undergoing disciplinary review and supervision investigation by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission.

Regarding Zhu Congjiu's investigation, some industry insiders said that it was "not unexpected", because in recent years, a number of financial people who have worked with Zhu Congjiu have been investigated.

Zhu Congjiu, known as the governor of one billion provinces.

At the age of 48, Zhu Congjiu began to serve as the vice governor of Zhejiang Province, which can be described as young and promising. However, the vice governor has been in office for 10 years, becoming the longest-serving vice governor of finance in history, and he has not been able to go further in his career.

According to Caixin, Zhu Congjiu did not "go further" mainly because his family was too rich.

According to people familiar with the matter, Zhu Congjiu has been an openly "rich man" among the senior cadres of the China Securities Regulatory Commission and Zhejiang Province for many years, and "the assets declared to the organization are nearly 1 billion yuan."

Zhu Congjiu once held a senior position in the China Securities Regulatory Commission, and it is worth mentioning that Zhu Congjiu's wife is engaged in the private equity industry, which is closely related to the field she is in charge of.

According to Caixin, Zhu Congjiu's wife is called Fang Ruizhi.

Fang Ruizhi served as the chief inspector of China Asset Management in his early years, and worked with Wang Yawei, the first brother of private equity funds, Fan Yonghong, the former general manager of China Asset Management, and Guo Shuqiang, and also had personal relations with Wang Yawei.

In September 2014, more than two years after Wang Yawei left China Asset Management for personal smuggling, Fang Ruizhi resigned from the post of Chief Inspector of China Asset Management and transferred to other positions in China Asset Management.

A person familiar with the matter said that after Fang Ruizhi retired early from China Asset Management, he "became one of Wang Yawei's main customers and bought a lot of Wang Yawei's company's products." Another source in the asset management industry said that Fang Ruizhi also indirectly invested in the private equity founded by Wang Yawei after his smuggling.

After Fang Ruizhi was taken away, "some people in the old Huaxia Fund period couldn't sit still, afraid that the old case would be investigated again."

This is indeed the case.

Guo Shuqiang, general manager of China Asset Management, was subsequently investigated, and Wang Yawei was also implicated. A number of interviewees said that Fan Yonghong, the founder of China Asset Management and the former general manager of China Asset Management, has avoided going abroad.

By July, the events had become clear. Wang Yawei has cooperated with the investigation because of Zhu Congjiu's case.

As early as mid-2014, China Asset Management exposed the rat warehouse nest case, and a number of current or former researchers and traders were investigated for being involved in the case, and some were sentenced around 2017. After the case was discovered, Wang Yawei and Guo Shuqiang were both involved but saved from danger.

Whether they can escape this time is probably more than lucky.

Speaking of which, Zhu Congjiu is a child prodigy, and he studied at Anhui Finance and Trade College as early as 16 years old. During his university years, he studied hard, actively participated in various academic and social practice activities, and after graduation, he was successfully admitted to the Graduate School of the People's Bank of China, known as the financial Whampoa, to study for a master's degree.

After that, Zhu Congjiu successfully entered the People's Bank of China, and soon won the appreciation of Liu Hongru, one of the leading figures in China's financial circles and an important leader in the reform of the economic system, and became its secretary.

Liu Hongru held a pivotal position in the People's Bank of China and held important positions in the National Commission for Economic Reform. Zhu Congjiu has since become a real boss.

The 85th class of students of the Graduate School of the People's Bank of China are full of talents.

Liu Liange, the former chairman of the Bank of China, Zhu Congjiu, the former vice governor of Zhejiang Province, Zhang Yujun, the former assistant to the chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, who was dismissed in 2015, Dai Zhikang, the chairman of Zendai Investment Group, who was sentenced for illegal fundraising in 2022, and Luo Xi, the former chairman of the group, who was dismissed in February this year, are all in the same session.

Among them, Liu Liange, Zhu Congjiu, and Zhang Yujun successively served as Chairman Liu's secretary after graduation.

It can be described as providence.

Wudaokou class of 1985 became the most "famous" class of students in Wudaokou, and it was also the class of students who "had the most accidents" later.

Zhu Congjiu worked in the Financial Management Department of the People's Bank of China for four years before joining the CSRC office. In September 1997, Zhu Congjiu served as the commissioner of the Shenzhen Securities Regulatory Office. In 1999, Zhu Congjiu went to the Shanghai Stock Exchange as deputy general manager.

The following year, Zhu Congjiu, who was only 35 years old, became the youngest general manager in the history of the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

In 2012, 47-year-old Zhu Congjiu "parachuted" from the position of assistant to the chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission to serve as vice governor of Zhejiang, becoming the youngest vice governor of finance.

Two months before Zhu Congjiu took office in Zhejiang, Wenzhou had just experienced a turmoil in private lending and was approved as the country's first pilot zone for comprehensive financial reform.

The outside world has high hopes for Zhu Congjiu, and people hope that he can rectify the chaos of private lending in Zhejiang with an iron fist.

In 2018, another round of thunderstorms broke out in many places across the country, including Zhejiang, following the 2016 E-renting treasure and Kuailu cases.

Several large-scale P2P companies such as Zhejiang grassroots investment and micro-loan network have fallen one after another, and the Lu brothers, who are from Ruian, Wenzhou, who were involved in the case of 60 billion yuan, suddenly ran away, causing a major earthquake in the P2P industry, and Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province, was once nicknamed "Lei Du".

This made Zhu Congjiu, who was pushing for inclusive finance, quite controversial at that time.

There are rumors that Jincheng Group, which is actually controlled by Wei Jie, has obtained the qualification of private equity fund and trust license, with the help of Zhu Congjiu behind it. After the case, Jincheng Group caused a total of more than 75 billion yuan in losses to investors, and harvested countless wealthy people in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.

Some people believe that Zhejiang was the latest to brake at that time, and the consequences were the most serious, and Zhu Congjiu, vice governor in charge of finance, was suspected of dereliction of duty.

In 2022, Zhu Congjiu suddenly stepped down from the post of vice governor and was transferred to the vice chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which indicates that his career is bleak.

In March this year, Wang Qingshan, president of Zheshang Securities, who was Zhu Congjiu's secretary, was taken away from a meeting by relevant departments. There is a lot of talk in the market.

On April 21, Liu Wei, the former deputy general manager of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, was investigated, and Wang Zongcheng, the former director of the Accounting Department of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, and Cao Jian, a member of the Issuance Examination Committee of the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the former deputy director of the Listing Review Center of the Shanghai Stock Exchange, were investigated one after another.

On May 4, as soon as the announcement of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection came out, all the dust was settled.

One billion governors, it's finally over!