In 2023, there will be eight "outrageous" events in the semiconductor industry
There are strange things every year, especially last year.
However, for semiconductor people, no matter how incredible things are, it is not surprising, because they have seen too much, and their psychological presets have already been full. Over the years, we have seen the buildings of "Skr" and "Ah Kun" rise and fall, and we have also seen the moths that continue to haunt the industry, and there are too many events full of absurdity and black humor.
Below, we have sorted out several "incredible" events in the semiconductor industry that will occur in 2023. Several of them can let everyone fully know what it means to "outrageous mother opens the door to outrageous - outrageous to home".
Korean room temperature superconducting oolong
In the public's impression, the field of scientific research and the ivory tower are relatively pure pure land, but in fact, this is also a circle full of competition for fame and fortune.
After all, where there are people, there are rivers and lakes.
On July 23, 2023, researchers from the Korea Institute for Quantum Energy and other institutions published a paper on the preprint website arXiv, saying that the "LK-99" material they synthesized has superconductivity, with a superconducting critical temperature of about 127 degrees Celsius, and superconductivity at atmospheric pressure.
All kinds of materials have a certain resistance at room temperature. Superconductors can only have zero resistance at a specific temperature, and superconducting materials can be divided into low-temperature superconductors and high-temperature superconductors according to the critical temperature. However, even the critical temperature of so-called "high-temperature superconductors" is usually minus 100 degrees Celsius or lower, and other harsh conditions are required to achieve it, which is difficult and expensive to prepare.
The realization of superconductivity at room temperature and pressure has been the dream pursued by many scientific research experts for more than 100 years. Once the above-mentioned research in South Korea is verified, it will be called a revolutionary technological change, and its importance and influence will be no less than the invention of electricity.
Image source | The Paper
It is precisely for this reason that once the above news was announced, it immediately attracted widespread attention from all walks of life, and it triggered a number of concept stocks in the secondary market.
Unfortunately, it was not long before the events were reversed. Members of the research team in South Korea said the paper was flawed and that a member of the team had published it without consent and had asked to take it down. On August 16, 2023, the journal Nature published an article "LK-99 is not a superconductor - how scientific detectives solve the mystery".
Academician Zhao Zhongxian, a leading scientist in the field of superconductivity in China, said in an interview that LK-99 has nothing to do with superconductivity, and the people who did the research were too anxious. If you think about it a little more, you will find that it is not superconductivity, and a similar situation has happened before in the field of scientific research.
As Academician Zhao Zhongxian said, there is more than one oolong in the field of superconducting materials.
In 2020, Dias, a physicist at the University of Rochester in New York, published a paper saying that hydrogen, carbon and sulfur elements have been photochemically synthesized by hydrogen, carbon and sulfur in the laboratory in a diamond pressure cavity, and the critical temperature of superconductivity has been raised to 15 °C. However, Nature found that Dias's data was processed in a problematic manner and that the results of his experiments were not successfully reproduced, so the paper was retracted. In 2023, Dias made a comeback and broke the big news of achieving room-temperature superconductivity at the conference, but the results were falsified again.
For latecomers, the oolong incidents caused by many so-called "technological breakthroughs" are worth summing up lessons and lessons. Extraordinary conclusions require extraordinary evidence, and major scientific discoveries should be analyzed and verified with greater care.
Quanta computer chip theft case
At the end of 2022, Lin resigned from Quanta Computer (founded in 1988, a Fortune 500 company and one of the world's largest laptop and server OEMs).
For some reason, Lin had financial difficulties after resigning, but he thought about it and thought of it, and he hit the idea on his former owner.
In February 2023, Lin falsely claimed to be an in-service employee of Quanta Computer, entered the factory by forging the signatures of colleagues, borrowing temporary identification cards of employees, etc., destroyed iron cabinets with his bare hands, stole computer CPUs and memory and other items, and very cleverly hid the stolen items under his crotch and shoe covers to avoid scanning and inspection by guards.
Lin stole 9 times in the same way, stealing a total of 83 computer CPUs and 833 pieces of memory, worth up to NT$9,238,983 (about RMB 2.08 million).
After Quanta's computer called the police, the police found 93 stolen memories, 1 CPU and 100,000 yuan of stolen money at Lin's residence based on evidence such as the conversation records of the stolen items and Quanta's internal surveillance footage. Lin also confessed to his stealing.
In the end, the Taoyuan District Prosecutor's Office concluded the investigation and prosecuted Lin on suspicion of forgery, theft, and destruction of security equipment, and confiscated and recovered the criminal proceeds.
CCTV's statement today has been broadcast for so many years, and there have been many burglary cases, but it is the first time that the modus operandi is so strange. Moreover, Quanta Computer has any grudges and grudges against Lin, which can make him think about it for so long, and he frequently "patronizes" as many as 9 times.
Amethystum storage fraud listing case
Don't fake, you will be caught. On suspicion of fraudulent issuance of securities, the actual controller and persons acting in concert with Amethystum Storage, the first batch of delisted companies on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, were arrested.
According to public information, Amethystum Storage was established on April 15, 2010. In February 2020, Amethystum Storage was listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange with the stock code 688086.
In the more than two years since its listing, Amethystum Storage has frequently changed auditors, and such an abnormal behavior will certainly attract the attention of the CSRC. In particular, Zhongxi Certified Public Accountants issued an audit report on the 2021 financial report of Amethystum Storage that could not express an opinion and issued a negative opinion on the company's internal control. At the same time, the company's director Wen Huasheng, independent director Wang Tielin, independent director Wang Huang and others all said that they could not guarantee the authenticity, accuracy and completeness of the content of the 2021 annual report.
In February 2022, the China Securities Regulatory Commission officially launched an investigation into Amethystum Storage. In April 2023, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) issued the Notice of Administrative Punishment.
According to the "Administrative Penalty Decision", Amethystum Storage's violations of laws and regulations began when it submitted its prospectus to the Science and Technology Innovation Board in April 2019. In the prospectus, Amethystum Storage falsely increased its operating income and profits by fictitious sales contracts, forged logistics documents and acceptance documents, arranging fund collection, and recognizing revenue in advance.
During the reporting period from 2017 to the first half of 2019, Amethystum Storage inflated profits totaling 85.99 million yuan. The balance of external guarantees at the end of 2016, the end of 2017 and the end of the first half of 2019 that was not disclosed in the prospectus of Amethystum Storage was 10 million yuan, 10 million yuan and 75 million 120,000 yuan respectively. As of the signing date of the prospectus, the total balance of external guarantees was not disclosed as required, amounting to 135 million yuan.
After its listing, Amethystum Storage continued to inflate its operating income and profits through the above-mentioned financial fraud, and inflated its profits by 145 million yuan in 2019, accounting for 94.55% of the absolute value of the total profits recorded in the current report. In 2020, the inflated profit was 169 million yuan, accounting for 150.21% of the absolute value of the total profit recorded in the current report. At the same time, Amethystum Storage also failed to disclose external guarantees as required.
On May 31, 2023, Amethystum Storage received a self-regulatory decision issued by the Shanghai Stock Exchange, deciding to terminate the listing of the company's shares. On July 7, the company officially announced the termination of listing.
On the evening of December 22, Guangdong Amethystum Information Storage Technology Co., Ltd. (formerly "Amethystum Storage") issued an announcement stating that the company learned from the Meizhou Municipal Public Security Bureau that according to relevant regulations, Zheng Mu, the actual controller, and Luo Tiewei, the actual controller acting in concert, were suspected of fraudulent issuance of securities. The above two people are currently detained in the Meixian District Detention Center in Meizhou City, and it is understood that they have been arrested by the Meizhou City Procuratorate.
On December 29, 2023, the China Securities Regulatory Commission released the latest progress on the Amethystum Storage case, and the four intermediaries involved in the case, including China Securities Securities, have promised to pay about 1.275 billion yuan in commitments, of which about 1.086 billion yuan have been compensated for investors' losses through the advance compensation procedure in the early stage.
*ST左江的DPU实力如何？
*ST Zuojiang has not been doing well recently.
As of the close of trading on January 5, 2024, *ST Zuojiang's share price was 31.3 yuan/share, and on July 14, 2023, its share price was as high as 299.8 yuan/share, and the stock price almost achieved ankle slashing in less than half a year.
The reason why the stock price fluctuates so much has a lot to do with a series of news events in *ST Zuojiang.
The concept of AI has been popular in the past two years, and *ST Zuojiang also sees the potential of this business. Since 2021, *ST Zuojiang has continuously disclosed that it is developing a "programmable network data processing chip" (DPU). In its 2022 annual report, it also attributed part of the decline in the company's performance to large R&D investment.
However, the company has rarely talked about the specific sales and amount of DPU chips. When the Shenzhen Stock Exchange issued an inquiry letter for the semi-annual report in 2023, the company disclosed the DPU chip revenue with a contract amount of 12.61 million yuan in the reply to the inquiry letter.
According to the announcement, the transaction contract was signed on December 27, 2022, and the delivery was completed on January 3, 2023. In November 2023, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange issued two inquiry letters for the third quarterly report, directly questioning the reasonableness of the delivery within 5 days of the signing of the contract, whether the customer is the end user of the product, and whether it has commercial substance.
In response to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange's questioning, *ST Zuojiang replied in the inquiry letter that the counterparty of the contract for the "DPU chip" income report is Haotian Xuhui, and Haotian Xuhui is a trader, and it intends to become an agent of *ST Zuojiang DPU chip. Therefore, after obtaining customer demand information, the company purchased 400 pieces of "NE6000" series DPU chips from *ST Zuojiang Technology and sold them to Juxian Technology. According to the on-site visit of the annual audit accountant, as of now (December 12, 2023), Juxian Technology has received 20 chips for marketing, 10 chips for research and development, and the remaining 370 chips are stored in the warehouse and have not yet been sold externally.
It is worth mentioning that the verification conclusion given by the annual audit accountant after completing the verification procedure is that Juxian Technology has not completed the substantive development and sales of NE6000 series DPU chips, and whether the relevant sales can be finally confirmed in 2023 needs to be further judged.
According to the third quarter report of 2023, *ST Zuojiang's revenue in the first three quarters was 33.72 million yuan, and if the 12.61 million yuan DPU chip revenue in the above transaction cannot be recognized in 2023, its revenue in the first three quarters will shrink to a certain extent. And part of the reason for the huge increase in ST Zuojiang's previous stock price is that it has rubbed on the concept of AI, and if its strength in the field of DPU chips is no longer recognized by the market, the stock price will definitely retreat greatly.
Infringement of trade secrets
On December 21, 2023, the official Weibo of the Economic Crime Investigation Corps of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau announced that under the command and deployment of the Ministry of Public Security and with the strong cooperation of the Jiangsu police, the Shanghai police successfully detected a case of infringement of chip technology trade secrets, arrested 14 criminal suspects, and seized 7 servers that stored infringing chip technology.
After investigation, in February 2021, in order to obtain illegal benefits, Zhang, Liu and others, the former executives of the rights company, set up a technology company after leaving the company, and induced a number of R&D personnel of the original rights company to jump to their company by paying high salaries and equity inducements, and instructed these personnel to illegally obtain the chip technology information of the rights company through excerpts, screenshots, etc., before leaving the company, and plagiarized and applied it to the same type of chip designed by Zhang's company, in an attempt to make illegal profits.
After identification, 40 technical points of the infringing chip technology are more than 90% identical to the secret points of the trade secrets of the rights company, constituting substantial sameness.
On April 19, 2023, with the strong cooperation of the Jiangsu police, the Shanghai police carried out a centralized network collection operation in Shanghai and Suzhou, and successfully arrested 14 core members of the company involved in the case, including Zhang, Liu and others, and investigated and dealt with them in a timely manner before the infringing chips were put into mass production.
At present, four main suspects, including Zhang and Liu, have been arrested by the police on suspicion of infringing on trade secrets, and the remaining 10 suspects have been released on bail pending trial in accordance with the law. Zhang's gang's act of stealing secrets led to the loss of the rights company's trade secrets, and it should be determined that the rights company suffered losses based on the commercial value of the trade secrets, such as the cost of research and development of the trade secrets, the proceeds from the implementation of the trade secrets, and so on.
Although the official Weibo of the Economic Crime Investigation Corps of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau did not disclose specific information about the relevant companies, and the disclosed pictures were also coded, according to the official pictures disclosed by the relevant media and related companies afterwards, the company involved was Zunpai Communication Technology (Nanjing) Co., Ltd., and the company that was infringed was Huawei Hisilicon Semiconductor.
Image source | @华为中国微博
As early as August 2023, Shanghai Hisilicon Technology Co., Ltd., a subsidiary of Huawei, applied to the court for pre-litigation property preservation, requesting that the bank deposits of the respondent Zuopai Communication Technology and its Shanghai, Beijing, Suzhou, and Shenzhen branches and subsidiaries Shanghai Zumpai Communication Technology Co., Ltd. be frozen for 95 million yuan, or other assets with corresponding value sealed, frozen, or seized. The court found that the above-mentioned application complied with the provisions of the law and ruled to enforce it.
According to the data, Zunpai Communication Technology (Nanjing) Co., Ltd. was established in March 2021 and registered in Jiangbei New Area, Nanjing, and Shanghai Zunpai Communication Technology Co., Ltd. is its wholly-owned subsidiary. Zunpai Communication focuses on Wi-Fi chips, which are used in routers, mobile phones, tablets and TVs.
With more than 20 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, he has served as a senior technical director/senior technical expert of well-known chip companies at home and abroad, and has presided over the development of a variety of short-range interconnect chips.
WM Motor and Shen Hui who "went on a business trip this week".
"Live like an animal". At the beginning of 2023, when Shen Hui, the founder of WM Motor, shouted this sentence, WM Motor was already far behind its former peers NIO, Li Li, and Xiaopeng, and fell into the predicament of weak sales and blocked financing.
In fact, as early as the beginning of its establishment, both the automotive industry and investment institutions were more optimistic about Shen Hui, who has many years of experience in the automotive industry, rather than He Xiaopeng and others, who were slightly cross-border in nature.
According to public information, since 1994, Shen Hui has worked in a number of multinational companies, became the general manager of BorgWarner Group joint venture at the age of 30, and later joined Geely Group as vice president, successfully mastered the acquisition of Volvo, completing the largest overseas merger and acquisition in the history of Chinese automobiles. These glittering resumes have made the outside world label Shen Hui - "reliable".
图源 | @威马汽车沈晖Freeman微博
In the early days of the new car-making forces, WM was indeed ahead of Xpeng, Li and so on. After its first mass-produced model, the EX5, was launched in September 2018, it ranked first in the sales of a single model among new car manufacturers for several months. In 2019, Weimar's annual sales volume was second only to NIO, and in September 2020, it completed the D round of financing of 10 billion.
But unfortunately, Weimar's highlights were not very long-lasting, and it was gradually caught up by Xiaopeng and Ideal, and later surpassed by Nezha and Leap, and finally became "others" in the new car-making forces. In 2022, WM Motor has already shown some fatigue, and in September of that year, Shen Hui bluntly said that the company encountered great financial pressure.
As for the reason why WM Motor fell behind, many people believe that it is directly caused by the failure of its listing and financing, and it is inferior to the top echelon enterprises in terms of business strategy and management efficiency. In an interview last year, Shen Hui also admitted frankly that he did not accumulate seed users for products with outstanding highlights in the early days, which needs to be reflected, "As soon as Weimar came up, he hoped that everyone liked the cars he made, and hoped to become Volkswagen and Toyota, but if you look carefully, these brands of cars are relatively popular and relatively mediocre." WM's intelligence, in the long run, has not become a core differentiating advantage. ”
According to reports, since the second half of 2022, WM Motor's Huanggang plant has basically been in a state of shutdown, and since then, there have been cases of dealers withdrawing from the network and employees leaving. Until October 2023, WM Motor Technology Group Co., Ltd. was filed for bankruptcy reorganization, and the applicant was WM itself.
Before that, Shen Hui had already gone abroad, and he posted on September 10, 2023, saying, "I went on a business trip to Munich and then New York this week. Good things are grinding, wait for the flowers to bloom". In an interview in March, he also said, "As long as Weimar still has a breath, it can still continue to fight." ”
Nowadays, among the new domestic car-making forces, there is not only the classic famous scene of Mr. Jia "returning to China next week", but also the legendary story of Mr. Shen's "business trip this week".
Open AI infighting
At the end of 2022, OpenAI's ChatGPT was born, which successfully made the world tremble and ignited the relatively silent artificial intelligence track.
On the occasion of its first anniversary, the outside world thought that there would be newer iterations of technical products, but as a result, there was a bloody "palace fighting drama". OpenAI CEO Altman (Altman), like Jobs, experienced a cool drama of being exiled from exile to the return of the king. It's just that Jobs waited for 12 years for the ending of the return of the king, while Altman only took 5 days.
Let's follow the timeline. On November 17, Altman was suddenly ousted, and OpenAI director Ilya Sutskever and three other directors threw Altman out.
OpenAI's major shareholders do not seem to be satisfied with the outcome of Altman's ouster, and investors believe that the latter is the leader who can lead OpenAI to fruition, and they have put pressure to welcome Altman back.
So Altman went back to negotiate as a visitor. However, the first negotiations ended in failure. For this result, many people within OpenAI are not satisfied. On November 20, more than half of the employees directly signed a joint letter threatening to resign, insisting on welcoming back Altman and others.
On November 21, Altman, who had the support of employees, had high morale and held a second round of negotiations with the board of directors of open AI. The end result was Altman's return to the company as CEO, a "shuffle" of the board of directors, and a new board of directors consisting of Brett Taylor (chairman), Larry Summers, and Adam D'Angello.
OpenAI's palace drama has sparked a lot of discussion, not only in terms of company management, but also on how to balance ideals and reality in technology companies that stand on cutting-edge technology. In general, the vision of profit expansion and non-profit is ultimately a dilemma, and there must be a choice between ideal and reality. Altman's return means that the future development of open AI will be more focused on the commercialization route. After all, being alive is the foundation of everything.
Daihatsu Motor has suspended all car shipments
In December 2023, Daihatsu Motors, a subsidiary of Toyota, issued a statement. Toyota said in a statement that it would suspend shipments of all vehicles as part of an investigation into its subsidiary Daihatsu Motor's vehicles, which found that most of its vehicles had falsified safety crash test data. Toyota has reportedly found about 174 violations in 64 models, including Daihatsu brand vehicles, as well as cars manufactured for Toyota and Mazda.
Image source | @丰田中国微博
Toyota's investigation focused on the car's airbag control unit, and the results showed that the airbag control unit used in the crash test was different from the airbag control unit actually sold. According to the company, the reasons for the non-compliance include "overly tight and rigid work schedules, which cause great pressure", "excessive responsibility on site, lack of management involvement", "management only focuses on short-term development, and turns a blind eye to non-compliance".
It is worth mentioning that in May 2023, four models of Daihatsu Motor improperly modified the front seat door lining (DoorTrim) in the side impact test, violating the test procedures and methods stipulated in the regulations, in other words, collision fraud. Because the incident was too bad, Toyota Motor Chairman Akio Toyoda personally apologized at the time, saying that this was a betrayal of the trust of customers and an absolutely unacceptable behavior. However, after a comprehensive investigation, Daihatsu had more problems with the problem, so much so that it had to stop shipments altogether.
On December 25, 2023, Daihatsu Motor Co., Ltd. announced that it will compensate 423 suppliers with direct business relationships in Japan. Daihatsu said it would consider compensating suppliers based on past business volumes. At the same time, the company will also work with key suppliers to deal with the consequences of this scandal and may help small subcontractors who have not been compensated to be able to access support funds from the industrial sector.
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