At the beginning of the year, due to the addition of Wang Shuguo, Cao Dewang spent 10 billion yuan to build Fuyao University of Science and Technology, which was once again out of the circle.
However, entrepreneurs are not alone.
On the north bank of the Yongjiang River in Ningbo, there is a construction site with roaring machinery and steel frames, and a private university is in full swing.
The campus, tentatively named Ningbo Oriental University of Technology, has an investment of 30 billion yuan, but there has never been any hype on the Internet, and few people know the names of the core donors.
However, this person is not ordinary, and he can definitely be called a bigwig-level figure in the field of chips in China.
He is the head of Weir shares, Yu Renrong, the richest man in China's chips.
Network diagram
Since the United States has repeatedly "shot" at China's chip industry, everyone knows that small chips are high-tech, and if they don't pay attention, they will be choked by outsiders.
As China's largest chip manufacturer, Yu Renrong naturally knows the stakes and stakes, and the purpose of spending a huge amount of money to build a school is to break through the "stuck neck" technical problem from the source.
Recently, Yu Renrong donated Weir shares with a market value of 1.5 billion yuan to the school, aiming to practice "ten years of trees and one hundred years of education".
A high IQ does not necessarily make a talent, but a talent must have an IQ that is superior to others.
There is no doubt that Yu Renrong's IQ is super high.
Born in 1966, his family background is extremely ordinary, but with his personal efforts, he was admitted to the best local school - Zhenhai Middle School after graduating from junior high school.
A few years later, he was admitted to the EE85 class of the famous wireless communication department of Tsinghua University as the champion of Ningbo Zhenhai.
And this class can be described as the existence of China's top chip group, and many chip bigwigs are Yu Renrong's classmates.
For example, Zhao Weiguo, chairman of Tsinghua Unigroup, Shu Qingming, founder of GigaDevice, Feng Chenhui, co-founder of Zhuosheng Microelectronics, and Zhao Lidong, founder of Suiyuan Technology, etc., occupy almost half of China's chips.
Network diagram
It was precisely because of this that Yu Renrong came up with the idea of running a school: if there were multiple such classes, would China's scientific research still be stuck?
But all this, Yu Renrong did not expect at that time.
As soon as he graduated from university, Yu Renrong devoted himself to his first position in life with enthusiasm.
At that time, Yu Renrong easily entered the top domestic IT company Inspur Group and became an engineer.
For many people, entering such a large company means a high salary and a good life.
Here, however, Yu Renrong sees no future.
Although the work may not seem difficult, it is very busy, with little room for growth, and no time for self-improvement.
After a long time, Yu Renrong realized that he was not here. Two years later, Yu Renrong resigned decisively despite the dissuasion of everyone and left the wave.
After that, Yu Renrong went to Hong Kong Longyue Electronics and became a sales manager, mainly responsible for the distribution of electronic components.
He has been doing this job for six years, during which he has achieved remarkable results in technology and sales, and has also accumulated a lot of experience and contacts.
Network diagram
It was not until 1998 that Yu Renrong decided to set up his own business and established Beijing Huaqingchang Technology and Trade Co., Ltd. to continue to engage in the distribution of electronic components.
At that time, the tide of globalization was intensifying, and all kinds of electronic products began to enter thousands of households with a rapid trend, and electronic components were in short supply.
Standing at this outlet, Yu Renrong, who has great business talent, led Huaqing employees to successfully win the agency rights of many internationally renowned semiconductor companies such as Panasonic and onsemi.
In just a few years, Yu Renrong has become the largest distributor of electronic components in Beijing, with an annual profit of more than 10 million US dollars.
It's just that Yu Renrong, who only wanted to earn one million a year and honor his parents, was not complacent, but soberly realized that he could not be controlled by others forever, and only by developing his own brand and independently engaging in research and development was the king.
So, in 2007, Yu Renrong once again made a major decision to establish Weir Co., Ltd., no longer just making wedding dresses for others.
The prototype of Weir's 100 billion business empire has begun to emerge and will be officially launched soon.
At the beginning of the establishment of Weir shares, research and development was just beginning, and it was impossible to support the normal operation of the company's funds.
Moreover, the R&D cycle is long and requires a lot of manpower, material and financial resources, and the wise Yu Renrong will certainly not let his newly established company fall into difficulties.
On the one hand, he continued to engage in the distribution of electronic components, working closely with authoritative semiconductor manufacturers to make profits, and on the other hand, he continued to invest the money he earned in the research and development of his own brand until the new product was launched and was on the right track.
In 2013, Weir began to make up for the shortcomings of scientific research and technology.
In the past few years, Yu Renrong has successively recruited many enterprises such as Hong Kong Huaqing and Wuxi Zhongpu Microelectronics Co., Ltd., and successfully expanded the company's business to the chip industry.
By 2017, Weir shares have been making great progress, gradually gaining strength, and successfully landed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and Yu Renrong was also on the billionaire list.
Network diagram
For ordinary people, this should be the day when Yu Renrong's dream comes true. However, Yu Renrong was not happy.
It turned out that the market did not recognize Weir shares at that time, thinking that he was a distributor, and Yu Renrong also believed that this achievement was created by distribution.
And Yu Renrong's real ambition is to build Weir shares into a real chip company.
For the sake of his dream, Yu Renrong took the listing of Weir shares as a new starting point and continued to move forward.
Immediately afterwards, he set his sights on Beijing Haowei, just because its predecessor was the famous American veteran technology giant Haowei Technology.
But at that time, Beijing Haowei was the leader of the high-end market of image sensor chips, and how could Weir shares, which had just entered the capital market, be shaken?
However, the seemingly hopeless situation soon emerged as an opportunity.
With the rapid rise of Sony and Samsung, they have successively become the big brothers in the industry, and the market share of Haowei Technology has gradually been eroded by the two, and even fell to the point of "selling themselves to save their lives".
This is a rare opportunity for Weir, which is eager to acquire Beijing Haowei.
But even so, the total assets of Haowei Technology at that time were as much as 5 times that of Weir shares, but Yu Renrong was bound to win, staged a shocking merger and acquisition drama of "snake swallowing elephants", and finally pocketed 96.08% of the equity of Haowei Technology.
Of course, this is also indispensable to the friendship of Tsinghua classmates, Chen Datong, one of the founders of OmniVision Technology in the United States, is also an alumnus of the Radio Department of Tsinghua University in 1977, and most of the start-up teams are from Tsinghua University.
Network diagram
This merger and acquisition directly transformed Weir shares into a real chip company.
Huawei, Xiaomi, vivo, etc., well-known domestic mobile phone leading enterprises, have become customers of Weir shares, and Weir shares' products have gradually set foot in the field of artificial intelligence such as drones and unmanned driving.
With the rise of artificial intelligence, Weir's products have become hot, and the profitability is not the same.
The net profit of Weir shares has skyrocketed, and the stock price has continued to soar, from 7.02 yuan per share when it was first listed, to 345 yuan in 2021, with a market value of up to 100 billion.
In the list of "Top 100 Chinese Semiconductor Enterprises" released in December 2021, Weir shares ranked second only to Huawei HiSilicon.
It took only 4 years for Yu Renrong to completely transform a distribution-oriented agency company into a semiconductor giant that cannot be ignored in the world.
At the same time, Yu Renrong's worth has also doubled rapidly, and by 2024, he will be among the top 500 in the "2024 Hurun Global Rich List", becoming a veritable "China's richest man in chips".
Network diagram
After attaching importance to learning and education, Yu Renrong began to consider feeding back China's science and technology education.
Yu Renrong believes that no matter when, whether it is Weir shares or the country, it must have its own scientific and technological strength so that it will not be easily stifled.
In 2020, Yu Renrong, who was deeply in love with Sang Zi, returned to his hometown for an inspection, and soon made a major decision:
Invest in the construction of a high-level science and engineering research university in Zhenhai, Ningbo, to provide scientific and technological talents for China's scientific and technological development.
As soon as this statement came out, everyone was in an uproar!
Although it is not a new thing for industry tycoons to invest in running schools in recent years, the establishment of a high-level university requires not only feelings and original intentions, but also an investment of tens of billions at every turn.
Unexpectedly, the following year, Ningbo officials released the blockbuster news of Yu Renrong's donation to build the school, and the investment amount was even more jaw-dropping.
The full 300 small goals are three times that of Cao Dewang's investment in Fuyao University of Science and Technology.
You must know that the total annual donation of the top 100 entrepreneurs on the Forbes China Charity List was only 24.51 billion yuan, and Yu Renrong donated 30 billion yuan as soon as he made a move!
The size of the stroke exceeded many people's expectations. Yu Renrong is also almost indisputably the entrepreneur with the largest individual donations in China.
Network diagram
At the end of 2021, the signing ceremony of the cooperation between the Ningbo Government and the Yu Renrong Education Foundation was officially launched, and the foundation stone of the campus construction was officially laid at the end of 2022 after intensive preparations.
Including pre-site selection, design planning and talent construction, Yu Renrong actively participated.
For him, building a school is his childhood dream, and he has never forgotten it.
The university covers an area of 2,300 acres, and is expected to invest 46 billion yuan when completed, of which the Ningbo government will invest 16 billion yuan to select the school site, Yu Renrong will invest 30 billion yuan, 10 billion yuan will be used for infrastructure construction, and the other 20 billion yuan will be used for scientific research and talent training.
After the completion of the school, it can accommodate 4,000 undergraduate students and 6,000 graduate students at the same time, and in the future, the school will focus more on research.
At present, Eastern University of Technology (tentative name) has signed joint doctoral training agreements with Shanghai Jiaotong University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and other institutions of higher learning.
Network diagram
Not only that, the school's faculty is also quite strong, and the president is Chen Shiyi, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, who is not as popular as Wang Guoshu, the new president of Fuyao University of Science and Technology, but he is also a world-renowned educator.
The university is expected to start recruiting students in 2025, but at present, 60 professors from famous universities have signed contracts here, including academicians of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, fellows of internationally renowned academic institutions, etc., and more than 60% of the professors have teaching experience in the world's top 200 universities.
But running a school requires continuous investment, and there will be no short-term benefits, so why should Yu Renrong resolutely take this path?
A sentence from Zhang Lei, the founder of Hillhouse Capital, answers this question: talent is always an investment that does not need to be withdrawn.
In recent years, industry tycoons have spent huge sums of money to run schools, and the logic behind it is to invest in talents.
Westlake University built by Shi Yigong and others, Beijing Geely College invested by Geely helmsman Li Shufu, and Fuyao University of Science and Technology donated by Cao Dewang, the "glass king", are all focusing on cultivating talents in short supply in the country.
According to the statistics of the Semiconductor Association, by 2025, China's chip talent gap will reach 300,000, and the chip talents trained by domestic universities are less than 1/10.
Network diagram
Foreign countries are eyeing chip manufacturing, and the country is in urgent need of a strong team of chip design and technical talents.
Therefore, the cultivation of chip talents starts from education, and the high-quality students cultivated can achieve the integration of production, education and research, understand the industry and technology, and do it in one step.
Yu Renrong, who has been in the cutting-edge chip industry for many years, has invested heavily in running schools many times in order to break through the "stuck neck" problem from the source.
Yu Renrong, Cao Dewang and other industry tycoons hold up China's education with their own strength. Believe in them, the line is coming, the future can be expected!
-END-
Sources:
Financial world: "The richest man in chips smashed 30 billion yuan to build a university"
Sina Finance: "Another IC Circle Whampoa Military Academy is about to be built"
Minxian County Release: "Investment of Over 10 Billion!" "Oriental University of Technology", Permanent Campus Starts
Author: Vishan
Editor: Ichiyigi