Rebirth of Hong Kong Island, leading the technology war

Chapter 489: Female Executives of Ali Group
Hu Jiangshan and Wang Zhicheng agreed to meet with Mr. Zeng from Ningte after the New Year. This was a big deal for Wang Zhicheng.

When the two finished their conversation, it was already 8:30 in the evening.

Hu Jiangshan was wondering whether he should have a private chat with Cui Zhenxue at this late hour.

Just then, Hu Jiangshan's cell phone rang.

As expected, it was Cui Zhenxue who called.

Hu Jiangshan answered the phone.

"Hello, Boss Cui."

Cui Zhenxue asked: "Boss Hu, where are you now? Let's find a place to talk."

Hu Jiangshan said: "I am still at the meeting and will leave soon. Where should we go to talk?"

Cui Zhenxue thought for a moment and said, "Why don't we just go to the hotel restaurant, the western restaurant on the third floor? Let's meet at nine o'clock."

Hu Jiangshan agreed.

Only then did Hu Jiangshan realize that he still retained the living habits of his previous life. He had no problem working overtime in the middle of the night or even all night, but if there was nothing to do, he would definitely go home and rest after nine o'clock in the evening. This was the case until his rebirth.

Now that Hu Jiangshan has a rejuvenated body and is a rich second-generation, it would be unreasonable for him to go back to rest so early.

In some places, 9pm isn't even the time for nightlife to begin.

Meanwhile, Wyndham Resort.

After the new product launch conference of Zhiguang Technology, Cui Zhenxue returned to the hotel and rested for a while.

Cui Zhenxue changed into some more casual clothes and went out.

Cui Zhenxue came to the press conference alone this time without an assistant.

He does have a rather peculiar personality. He particularly likes to be independent and has a strong character. He does not have much desire for enjoyment and devotes almost all of his attention to his career.

So even though Cui Zhenxue's business is getting bigger and bigger, and is even starting to challenge its world-class peers, he still doesn't live a luxurious life like other bosses.

Cui Zhenxue invested most of the company's profits into research and development, roughly speaking nearly 70%.

This level of investment intensity is almost catching up with Huayao.

You should know that Huayao has always been famous for its high investment in research and development. Even if the total amount of investment is converted in Lighthouse Yuan, it can rank among the top five or even top three on Blue Star.

It is precisely because of Cui Zhenxue's high investment that Juguan Technology has developed so rapidly, and it has opened two new branches in just one year.

Those two branches were naturally not built from scratch, but were acquired, so they expanded so quickly.

Of course, Cui Zhenxue understood that he could achieve this, and Hu Jiangshan definitely played a crucial role.

If Hu Jiangshan had not supplied a steady supply of photoresist, Juxing Technology would probably have gone bankrupt due to lack of raw materials, let alone continued to expand in scale.

Cui Zhenxue has encountered some difficulties recently, so he has been wanting to talk to Hu Jiangshan and learn from him.

Cui Zhenxue trusts Hu Jiangshan very much. Although Hu Jiangshan looks very young, his abilities are absolutely beyond doubt. He can even often do amazing things and solve extremely difficult problems. He has not only helped Cui Zhenxue's Juxing Technology, but also several other companies. Cui Zhenxue has basically heard about all of this.

Cui Zhenxue certainly did not place all his hopes of solving the problem on Hu Jiangshan. Hu Jiangshan was a human being, not a god. Cui Zhenxue felt that it was beyond his expectations that he could get some inspiration and suggestions from him.

Cui Zhenxue came to the western restaurant on the third floor.

The environment here is nice, quiet and fresh. In addition to eating, you can also drink coffee and have afternoon tea here.

There were quite a few people in the western restaurant at this time, most of them were guests who came to attend the new product launch of Zhiguang Technology, as well as media personnel. It can be seen that the scale of this launch was quite large, not inferior to the launches of large technology companies.

Cui Zhenxue looked at the time. There were still twenty minutes until nine o'clock, which was a little early.

But it doesn’t matter, it’s nice to have a cup of coffee first and sort out your thoughts.

Cui Zhenxue had ordered coffee and was looking at his phone when someone came over.

"Boss Cui, why are you alone?"

Cui Zhenxue looked up, was stunned at first, then stood up and greeted the man.

This is a girl who dresses very fashionably, with fair skin and a plump and slender figure. More importantly, her face looks very young, but she has a unique charm and temperament.

The girl's name is Lu Shulei. Her name sounds very cultured, but she is actually a science and engineering girl and currently holds an important position in a Chinese technology giant.

There are only a few technology giants in China at the moment, and the one where Lu Shulei works is one of the most prominent ones, namely the Ali Group.

The Ali Group was definitely the absolute overlord of an era in China, and even ushered in a new era of e-commerce on Blue Star.

Although there are e-commerce giants abroad and they were founded longer than Ali, Ali has achieved greater success, especially with such a huge market in China. Its development speed is very rapid, and it can even be said to be BT. In just ten years, it has become a giant.

However, what many people don’t know is that Ali is definitely more than just an e-commerce company. It also invests a lot in technology research and development. For example, it has previously developed its own operating system, but it failed in the womb for various reasons.

This is not really the result of inaction by the Ali Group, but because in the previous few years, apart from Lighthouse, it was impossible for other operating systems to appear. This is the sadness of doing the right thing in the wrong era.

At present, in addition to Huayao in the research and development of advanced semiconductors in mainland China, A-Li is also a very important force.

Especially in the field of artificial intelligence, Ali's investment is exaggerated, even surpassing Huayao.

ALi is not only making artificial intelligence chips, but also developing related artificial intelligence software.

However, due to some reasons, Ali's chip research and development is still relatively slow, and it dare not push it forward with full force and fanfare. There is nothing that can be done about it.

Once Ahri's "ambition" is exposed, he will likely encounter troubles like Huayao, or even worse.

Huayao can be fearless because it is not listed. However, it is different with the Ali Group. Not only is it listed, but it is also listed in the Lighthouse Country. It is impossible for it not to be timid.

Despite this, Ahri continued to devote herself to the work, waiting for the moment of breakthrough.

Therefore, compared with several other old technology giants in China, Ali is still quite respectable. At least it has never given up on technological research and development.

Cui Zhenxue and Lu Shulei have known each other for a long time, of course not because of personal matters, but because of cooperation.

As mentioned earlier, Cui Zhenxue’s Juxing Technology is a company that manufactures memory chips, which are commonly known as solid-state storage particles.

Now Juxing Technology's storage particles are doing pretty well, with good quality and price advantages. There is no shortage of orders, and the order volume is growing. However, Cui Zhenxue is not satisfied and wants to make memory chips.

Memory chips and storage chips are different. In terms of technical difficulty, memory chips are much more difficult. Especially high-bandwidth memory chip technology, that is, HBM technology. Currently, there is probably only one and a half that Bluestar can produce.

Why do we say one and a half? Because the leading one, the Samson Group from South Korea, has too high a market share, while the other one is a semiconductor company from the Beacon Country, which does have a certain market share, but it is indeed not much.

Therefore, Sanson Semiconductor has always been the leader in high-bandwidth memory chip technology.

Now Cui Zhenxue's Juxing Technology is also going to challenge the memory chip, and has even begun to develop high-bandwidth memory chip technology, so it has an intersection with the Ali Group.

Because the Ali Group is developing artificial intelligence chips, and these chips require high-bandwidth memory chips.

In the past, Ali always purchased from Sansong, but recently, I don’t know whether Sansong Group reduced the supply of chips to Ali because of too high demand and insufficient production capacity, or because of pressure from certain aspects. The high-bandwidth memory chips have even been suspended.

As for whether another semiconductor company in the beacon country can supply?

Of course it's not possible.

The reason is that it is a company from the Lighthouse Country. Ordinary, low-end chips can be sold to Ali, but high-bandwidth memory chips cannot be sold casually.

The semiconductor R&D department of the Ali Group has been quite distressed recently and has been looking for alternative solutions.

For example, can ordinary memory chips be used instead?

The effect is not very good. Although it can run, the performance of the artificial intelligence chip produced is greatly reduced, which makes it meaningless. It is better to use the GPU on the graphics card directly than to use this kind of artificial intelligence chip, which is more efficient.

If this compromise doesn't work, then we can only look for a new memory chip supplier.

Foreign products are definitely not good and are unreliable. Even if they can be sold temporarily, they may not be sold in the future. And what about domestic products? There are also many difficulties.

It was 2019, and there were very few semiconductor companies in mainland China that could manufacture memory chips, and the technology was not very mature, let alone high-bandwidth memory chips. There was not a single company that could manufacture memory chips.

Cui Zhenxue felt that this was a great opportunity. His Juxing Technology was doing well in making storage chips, so theoretically it might be possible for it to make memory chips.

However, Cui Zhenxue is not a fearless and ignorant person. He understands technology and knows that high-bandwidth memory chips are difficult, extremely difficult.

For this reason, Cui Zhenxue began to contact the Ali Group, hoping to conquer high-bandwidth memory technology.

Lu Shulei is an executive in the artificial intelligence technology research and development department. Although she is beautiful and has a graceful figure, she actually graduated from a prestigious university of science and technology in the north and has a very solid technical foundation.

The two communicated many times and became familiar with each other.

Lu Shulei asked: "Boss Cui, did you also just attend the new product launch conference of Zhiguang Technology?"

Cui Zhenxue nodded: "Yes, Mr. Lu, you also came in person. I didn't expect that. If I had known, I would have treated you to a meal."

Since it is a new robot product launch conference, it is normal to invite the Ali Group to participate, but it is indeed surprising that a high-ranking figure like Lu Shulei came.

As for Cui Zhenxue, even the boss of the company came to participate, and the other party is just a senior executive, so why would it be surprising that he came?

This is actually the reason why the company sizes are different.

Juxing Technology has indeed developed well, but it is still far behind the Ali Group, whether in terms of size, financial resources, or overall strength.

An ordinary medium-sized enterprise is not even as good as a large business unit of the Ali Group.

Cui Zhenxue invited Lu Shulei to sit down and have a cup of coffee together.

Lu Shulei hesitated for a moment and asked, "Aren't you waiting for someone? This is too disturbing."

Cui Zhenxue waved his hand: "Don't bother me. I'm meeting a business partner who is also from Hong Kong Island. Maybe you know him."

"Ah? Why do we know each other? Is he a businessman?"

"Yes, Mr. Lu, you may not know that he is the supplier of photoresist for our Juxing Technology. He can also supply some other chemical consumables. He is definitely the best in the industry."

As he spoke, Cui Zhenxue gave a thumbs up, meaning that this customer was very awesome and at the big-name level.

Lu Shulei was very surprised: "Photoresist? Boss Cui, do you mean that the photoresist used by your Juxing Technology is provided by a Hong Kong company? A trading company?"

Lu Shulei's previous Hong Kong company resold foreign photoresists to mainland China. To put it bluntly, it was doing the work of a profiteer.

There are many such trading companies, and many high-tech products, including Xinsheng, come from such channels.

Because of her work, Lu Shulei has come into contact with many technology trading companies and actually knows some of the bosses.

Cui Zhenxue shook his head: "It's not a trading company. They produce photoresist."

"……what?"

Lu Shulei looked at Cui Zhenxue in shock.

A company in Hong Kong Island can actually produce photoresist?
This sounds a bit like a fantasy.

Lu Shulei couldn't help but say, "Boss Cui, the photoresist used in your memory chip products should not be simple, right? Can companies in Hong Kong make this?"

Cui Zhenxue smiled: "If someone had told me before that Hong Kong companies could make photoresists, I would not have believed it. But the reason why our Juxing Technology was able to survive was because of this company. It was a life-saving straw at the time, so I have always been grateful to this friend."

Lu Shulei was indeed a little confused, but she also remembered that she had heard that there was indeed a mysterious company in the country that could manufacture photoresist.

This company can not only produce ordinary photoresist, but can even produce high-purity photoresist. You should know that chips below ten nanometers require high-purity photoresist, which is generally imported from small chemical companies. Many companies were out of stock some time ago, and it was this mysterious company that supplied the goods and made up for this shortcoming.

Could the partner Cui Zhenxue mentioned be the boss of this company?
Lu Shulei became interested and really wanted to get to know this boss and see who he was.

If it was an enterprise from the mainland or Taiwan Province, it would be understandable. But it is very rare that an enterprise in Hong Kong Island can also make photoresist, which is equivalent to a science fiction movie.

Cui Zhenxue ordered a cup of coffee for Lu Shulei, and the two chatted while waiting for someone.

Just then, someone walked into the western restaurant.

Lu Shulei noticed that he was a handsome guy, a very handsome guy, who really suited her aesthetic taste.

Lu Shulei still has very high standards.

I saw the handsome guy looking around, as if he was looking for someone.

Could it be...

(End of this chapter)