Text/AI Finance and Economics Tang Yu
Editor/Zhao Yanqiu
Why did the "Tsinghua Gang" Rongxin take a bankrupt chip factory
Recently, a Chinese chip foundry called Rongxin Semiconductor surfaced. Behind this semiconductor company, which was established only 4 months ago and has a valuation of up to 9.5 billion yuan, not only stands the investment institutions that have long focused on the upstream and downstream of the chip industry, such as Yuanhe Puhua and Feng Yuan Capital, but also the figure of Meituan Zhantou and Sequoia Capital.
This company is closely associated with the "Tsinghua Gang". Chen Datong, the founding partner of its shareholder Yuanhe Puhua, graduated from tsinghua's Department of Electronic Engineering and has participated in the establishment of camera chip company Howey Technology and mobile phone chip company Spreadtrum. The major shareholder of Fengyuan Capital is Yu Renrong, the founder of Weier Shares, a member of the domestic chip "100 billion club" with a current market value of more than 220 billion yuan. Wang Xing, the founder of Meituan, also graduated from Tsinghua.
A person from an institution that invested in Rongxin told AI Finance and Economics: "The entry of the US group and Sequoia can also be seen that the chip has been very hot in the past two years, and everyone is looking for opportunities in this direction." ”。
A major event after the establishment of Rongxin Semiconductor was to auction all the assets of Dehuai Semiconductor for 1.666 billion yuan, including plant buildings, 62 sets of equipment, and 171,300 square meters of industrial land.
Dehuai Semiconductor was founded in 2016, at the beginning of the establishment of the plan to invest a total investment of 45 billion yuan, the construction of an annual output of 240,000 pieces of 12-inch chip factory, after the capital chain is broken, on August 7, 2021, in the Jingdong auction bankruptcy platform for a public auction of its overall assets, and finally was auctioned by Rongxin.
Senior industry insider Li Gu analyzed the AI Finance and Economics Agency, Yuanhe Puhua and Feng Yuan Capital have previously invested in many chip design companies, and this time they are involved in the chip manufacturing field, and may also want to find a production platform for these invested companies. "Due to tight production capacity, many domestic small and medium-sized chip design companies can not find a place to produce chips, mainly these enterprises have small batches, generally tens of thousands of pieces, and debugging equipment is very time-consuming, for TSMC and SMIC these large foundries, it is not a cost-effective deal." Therefore, these design companies mainly go to small production lines like the Shanghai Institute of Industry and Research to produce, but the schedule is very tight now.
Photo/Visual China
This is similar to the Qingdao Xinen model founded by SMIC founder Zhang Rujing and his team. With a total investment of about 15 billion yuan, Xinen is the first collaborative integrated circuit manufacturing (CIDM) project in China, which is jointly invested by IC design companies, terminal application companies and IC manufacturers, which not only solves the manufacturing problems of chip design enterprises, but also allows the manufacturing plant production capacity to have market guarantees, which can be described as a win-win situation. In August this year, Zhang Rujing announced the success of the 8-inch factory, and the yield of the power chip produced reached more than 90%.
The equipment is too difficult to grab, and it will be put into production as soon as 2023
According to the description of Chen Jun, CEO of Rongxin Semiconductor, Rongxin Semiconductor did not do chip manufacturing like SMIC from the beginning, but started from chip-scale packaging, and the ultimate goal is to achieve the independent and controllable manufacturing capabilities of 12-inch chips.
The chip industry chain is mainly divided into three links: design, manufacturing and packaging and testing, of which the technical threshold of packaging and testing is low.
Li Gu analyzed the AI Finance and Economics Agency that Rongxin wants to extend from chip packaging to chip manufacturing, which is a huge challenge, whether it is technology or capital investment, chip manufacturing plants are dozens of times higher than the package. In a chip factory, the purchase of equipment can account for 70% of the total expenditure, if it can be used to top the second-hand equipment, a chip manufacturing plant also needs at least 8 billion to 10 billion yuan of investment. However, if it is a 12-inch wafer production line, there are very few second-hand equipment in circulation on the market, and the final investment will be as high as tens of billions of yuan. There are still technical talents, IP sources and other issues to be solved.
Perhaps it is precisely seeing these difficulties that Rongxin Semiconductor chose to start with the package. Even if it is a packaging plant, Li Gu believes that although Rongxin bought some equipment and plants, the overall construction cycle can be shortened, but at least until 2023 may not really be put into production. Mainly because some key high-end packaging and testing equipment, such as the precision dicing machines of Japan's Disco and TSK, have been affected by the epidemic, and now the order delivery time has been scheduled for a year and a half. There are not many such second-hand equipment in circulation on the market.
The industry generally expects that the shortage of global wafer production capacity will continue at least until 2022. But the chip industry cycles every few years. Nowadays, many chip companies are actively expanding production and building their own chip factories. For example, Zhao Haijun, co-CEO of SMIC, said that from the current supplier commitments, SMIC's Beijing 12-inch factory will increase by 10,000 pieces and ship in December; SMIC is also actively expanding its 8-inch plant in Shenzhen and Tianjin, adding 45,000 pieces, which will be realized in the fourth quarter of this year. In addition, the camera chip company Geke Micro is also building its own 12-inch fab, and the mobile phone ODM manufacturer Wingtech has also acquired Nexperia.
Wait until 2023 Rongxin Semiconductor is successfully put into production, if the production capacity is not as tight as it is today, is there still enough profit margin? Li Gu believes that the shareholders behind Rongxin Semiconductor are veterans rooted in the chip industry, and they will not only look at short-term interests.
Although there is still a certain distance from the big goal of chip manufacturing, Rongxin Semiconductor seems to have an intention partnership partner. AI Finance and Economics saw in an announcement released by the listed company Beijing Junzheng Integrated Circuit Co., Ltd. on July 30 that Junzheng said that it will invest in Rongxin Semiconductor in the near future to ensure the stability of future production capacity supply and procurement costs through deep binding with wafer foundries. Liu Qiang, CEO of Junzheng, is also a Tsinghua background.
"In the next 5-10 years, whether it is electronic products or cars, the demand for chips will only be larger and larger, and there will be no worry about no market." Li Gu said.
This article is originally produced by AI Finance and Economics, an account of Caijing Tianxia Weekly, without permission, please do not reprint it on any channel or platform. Violators will be prosecuted.