I asked you to save a bankrupt factory and you became the richest man in the world.

Chapter 451, Chapter 204-205: Hillhouse Vehicles Launches Listing Plan! (4000 words)
Now that the golden fingers are becoming increasingly scarce, Gao Huaijun has to buy time and sacrifice some equity interests. He thinks it is worth it no matter how you look at it.

Moreover, the Hillhouse chip factory is gradually increasing its production. Although most of its products are low-end chips, which are supplied to products such as Hillhouse nova and Hillhouse Honor series, as well as Hillhouse derivatives, these products still cannot cover the high costs brought by the configuration of a chip factory!
Damn, now after a year, we are going to lose hundreds of millions of dollars!

Gao Huaijun was dumbfounded when he saw it.

He knew this thing was very expensive, but he didn't expect it to be so expensive. It was even faster than burning paper money with a lighter!
But it’s normal if you think about it.

He only has one chip factory, and many costs cannot be spread out by expanding the production scale, making it seem very uneconomical to produce his own chips.

He now understood why most manufacturers were unwilling to produce their own chips!
Mature chips are very cheap and very stable.

The chips you produce are very expensive, and their performance is not only unstable, but also requires slow iteration.

Apart from Gao Huaijun, a tough guy who has experienced the future and is afraid that companies like Sansang will stop supplying, how could others be willing to invest huge amounts of money in flashy chip manufacturing and research and development?

It is precisely because of the long-term high consumption of Hillhouse Chip Factory and the gradual expansion of R&D by Hillhouse Vehicle that Gao Huaijun had the idea of ​​listing Hillhouse Vehicle’s stock!
And more importantly.

Now is a period of explosive growth in the new energy era. Hillhouse Vehicles is still fighting frantically in the domestic market and its products are still iterating at a high speed. Hillhouse itself needs to try to improve its own maturity while guiding and even shaping the market.

For this kind of strategic layout, one naturally has to look for a place that one is familiar with and has huge growth potential. So which other market can meet this demand?
There are domestic car companies that have expanded overseas. In addition to second-tier brands such as Qirui that use cheap and low-end models to compete in the lower-end markets in Asia, Africa and Latin America, there are also domestic brands that are trying to use new energy to expand into mature and large markets.

For example, Hillhouse vehicles!
Hillhouse Vehicles has been spending a lot of effort to develop the European market and has been in a semi-abandoned state regarding the North American market, that is, only a small part of the vehicles are exported in parallel to the Maple Leaf Country or Mexico, and then from these two countries to the United States.

But since it is so complicated, the amount is very small.

Hillhouse has already set up a location in Brussels and has a marketing department on the ground to test the waters, but from the perspective of product design and brand image, Hillhouse has not really taken this seriously at all and is still in the stage of research and absorbing feedback.

Judging from the feedback from foreign car reviewers, the car's workmanship and performance exceeded Europeans' expectations for Chinese cars, even by a lot. However, the design of various functions did not take into account the detailed needs of European users at all, localization was not done at all, and the UI translation was also very hasty.

Under this premise, the current sales volume in the European market is less than 20,000 units, which is already very impressive!
Twenty thousand units may not seem like a lot, but cars in Europe are expensive, costing around 50 billion yuan.

This is purely incremental and does not involve any money spent on spreading the R&D costs!

Therefore, given that we have already opened up the market in Europe, if we want to fully expand our presence in the next step, we will naturally need more financial support.

The amount of this fund is measured in tens of billions!

More importantly, Gao Huaijun had already anticipated that the major changes in a few years would not be the so-called "major changes unseen in a century."

In his opinion, the depth of this change is far more than just five hundred years, but a thousand years of historical dimension.

If we look back at the all-round confrontation between East University and West University a thousand years from now, this will be a heavyweight event that is enough to be described in detail in a separate section in history books!
He is now deeply involved in the turbulent waves of history!

In a sense, the old Cold War has not ended, and the Russo-Wuhan War, which may or may not happen again in the future, is still a continuation of the old Cold War system.

Today, the old and new Cold Wars are intertwined. The new Cold War is accompanied by "multipolarization", with various manifestations such as the expansion of AUKUS, the decoupling of globalization, and the rise of regional organizations. Externally, it is a game between the two poles of the East and the West, and internally, it is a process in which the world is trying hard to get rid of the control of a very small number of interest groups (deep state system).

If there is one thing that has not changed in this unprecedented upheaval, Gao Huaijun believes it should be human nature!
Since 2008, the gains in the stock market and financial sector have gone almost entirely to the wealthiest few, while 90% of the population has actually experienced a sustained economic contraction.

The so-called GDP growth in the United States is largely financial gains, including interest expenses, fines and rising house prices, which are all included in GDP.

However, this has not been translated into production and consumption capacity in the real economy, but has instead increased the burden on ordinary people.

Therefore, the deeper the prosperity, the greater the rebound energy will be.

This kind of energy can even be at the level of a nuclear bomb!
The acceleration of historical nodes at critical moments, especially now that Gao Huaijun has strongly intervened in this era, often means that the possibility of the "lotus effect" is increasing.

More importantly.

The underlying logic of the global economy is already changing!
Gao Huaijun's strong intervention in this era did not completely deviate from its original trajectory. Instead, artificial intelligence, a double-edged sword, forced only Dongda and Xida to fight the final decisive battle. Without a third opponent, others could only become food on the table!
In this case, if Hillhouse Vehicles does not go public, or the listing time is delayed for a few years, Gao Huaijun does not know how far Hillhouse can go in this major change that has not been seen in a thousand years!
In front of these two giants, a Fortune 500 company is as fragile as a small ant!
“我们需要100亿、200亿、500亿甚至1000亿美丽元的资金。人工智能团队曾说无人驾驶大项目和大模型项目加起来，需要将近1000亿美丽元的资金，这原本就很困难了。”高怀钧叹了一口气说道。

Tang Ying, who was standing by, couldn't help but look at Gao Huaijun with a look of horror. She didn't expect that Gao Huaijun had been stunned for a long time and suddenly uttered such a number.

1000 billion US dollars, what does this mean?

Xicheng’s fiscal revenue in 2016 was less than 900 billion yuan.

That's about 130 billion US dollars.

1000 billion US dollars will burn up the annual fiscal revenue of seven tin cities!

This is a very scary thing!

You know, Xicheng is not an ordinary prefecture-level city. It is a second-tier city with many heavy enterprises and one of the core cities in the Yangtze River Delta.

The first thing Gao Huaijun mentioned was 1000 billion US dollars. Even if Morgan Stanley headquarters heard this number, they would be shocked.

"Does Hillhouse Artificial Intelligence really need so much money?" Tang Ying couldn't help but ask.

After she said that, she felt a little regretful.

She herself has an idea of ​​how much money Hillhouse's artificial intelligence will cost.

There are now more than 2000 PhDs in this department!
These are not just some cheap PhDs, but are all doctors who graduated from famous universities and have strong scientific research capabilities.

The salary of one person alone needs to be at least between 30 and 100. If you add up more than 2000 people, that would easily be over billion a year!
This is just one year's salary expenditure.

If this continues for five years, wouldn't it take more than 50 billion yuan?
Other employees also need to be paid!

What about the equipment?
What about computing power?
All of these cost money, and it’s not a small amount.

If you are not a big company, you really can’t afford this. Hillhouse Capital is also a big spender.

In the past, car companies planned their products in three-year units.

For body-in-white parts, it takes three months to change a larger mold, not including the verification test cycle, business process, and technical solution confirmation time.

The development cycle of a new car model takes more than a year. That is truly a magical way of making a car that will be a success without any need for improvement.

In order to shorten the development time of new products, Hillhouse Auto chose to introduce simulation testing and introduce suppliers in advance, so that design, testing and other links can be carried out simultaneously. This has also enabled many multinational automakers and most local automakers to improve the efficiency of vehicle development to an unprecedented level.

The complete automotive design and development process includes strategic planning, conceptual design, engineering design, trial production and certification, production preparation, mass testing and production, etc.

Hillhouse now often achieves speed by shortening the development cycle in the design and testing stages.

This "roll" in the production cycle also puts pressure on employees. High-intensity overtime, reporting burdens, and strict performance appraisal systems seem to have become commonplace.

But if you want to push your employees to this point, you absolutely cannot do it without money!
Everyone comes to your company to make money.

Without money, no one can persist in such intensive overtime work!

but. . .

Gao Huaijun is a person who is very willing to spend money.

This also compresses Hillhouse's vehicle R&D cycle again and again.

It would be really easy for a small iteration or even a large iteration of a vehicle without Gao Huaijun’s participation to come out within a year like a mobile phone!

If all these scattered investments are added up into a five-year or ten-year plan, the investment could be an exaggerated 1000 billion US dollars. It does sound exaggerated, but it is not actually that exaggerated.

"The current large-scale model research and development requires the construction of a data center with a cost of approximately 1000 billion to 3000 billion US dollars. By then, electricity will become an extremely scarce resource." Gao Huaijun smiled slightly and did not directly answer Tang Ying's question, and continued.

"Data center? Now under Taihu Lake, the Taihu Light Super Data Center that we and Xicheng City have jointly built is not enough?" Tang Ying looked at Gao Huaijun in shock for the second time.

Gao Huaijun gave a brief account of the situation.

Hillhouse and Xicheng City have jointly developed a project in Mashan Town with a total investment of approximately 102 billion yuan, covering an area of ​​105 acres and a construction area of ​​over 12 square meters. It can provide approximately 1.3 racks, support over 30 servers, and provide a super data center with a computing power of 1500PFlops.

This super data center has just been launched, and now Hillhouse alone has taken up half of the computing power.

Adding on the amount taken up by other companies one after another, this super data center has basically been saturated!

"Exaggerated! It's really too exaggerated! In this era, where has the investment money gone? Those of us who work in finance really can't make it!" Tang Ying exclaimed exaggeratedly.

“The financial sector, real estate and monopoly industries do not create actual products but instead extract revenue through fees and rents.”

"To put it bluntly, Morgan Stanley and Gaosheng are just playing with information asymmetry and hyping up some concepts."

Gao Huaijun laughed, sat on the big sofa beside him, and said while drinking a glass of martini prepared by Tang Ying.

He is engaged in industry. Although he now indirectly controls a small bank, Xizhou Rural Commercial Bank, the bank is too small. He could make some splashes in the past, but not now.

The financing needs required by Hillhouse's current size cannot be replaced by Xizhou Rural Commercial Bank.

“Even if they are playing with the information gap, these banks are still the big players in Wall Street and the corporate interests closest to money! If Hillhouse Capital wants to go public, it still has to rely on the entire Western financial system!”

"Wall Street has been the world's engine for the past hundred years, while Silicon Valley can only be regarded as the world's engine oil. Without the engine oil, the engine will not run well; without the engine, we can only stand still. As for which one has a more far-reaching impact, there is no need to say more."

Tang Ying shrugged and said.

"If we must use cars as an analogy, basic science is the platform or the fuselage, Silicon Valley is the engine, and Wall Street is the seats and interior, and the government is the steering wheel. The interior can improve human happiness and comfort. Even without the interior, the wheel of history will still roll forward."

"Science and technology are primary productive forces!"

“Without technology, human society is nothing.”

"But let's not talk too much. You and Hillhouse's CFO should work out a listing plan for Hillhouse Vehicles. This should be done as soon as possible. I don't want Hillhouse Vehicles to drag its feet like Hillhouse Technology, which has been delayed for two years and still can't go public."

Speaking of the latter part, Gao Huaijun spoke in a serious voice.

Tang Ying immediately straightened her body and nodded quickly.

This matter is almost related to the future development of Hillhouse.

After Hillhouse Vehicles went public, basically Hillhouse’s two core businesses were listed.

The entire financing channel is fully open, and she knows clearly what is important and what is not!

"By the way, there is one more thing. The group hopes to buy a business jet, preferably an A320 business jet!" Tang Ying looked at Gao Huaijun expectantly.

"Business jet? What do you need that for? What's going on? The flight from Shanghai to Brussels has been suspended?"

"Even if there is demand, renting a plane is fine. Buying a plane requires a large group of people, such as flight attendants and pilots."

Gao Huaijun frowned and said.

(End of this chapter)