Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 282 Wang Hua in California

In early December, California was much colder than Shenzhen in early winter, but it was nothing to Wang Hua, as his hometown was in the north, where the winters were even colder.

After getting off the plane and passing through customs and arriving outside the airport, Wang Hua looked up at the sky and then took a quick glance at the surrounding environment.

It feels like that...

At this time, a middle-aged colleague from the California branch who came to pick us up at the airport said, "Let's go. Our car is parked in the parking lot next to us."

Immediately, Wang Hua, Brother Zhao and several other people followed the two colleagues from the American branch who came to pick them up and left.

This time on a business trip to California, in addition to Brother Zhao and Wang Hua, there were three colleagues from other departments of the Overseas Investment Department, a legal officer, one who was said to be a negotiation expert, and finally a manager-level management team leader.

Before Wang Hua came, he already knew the purpose of their visit to California, which was to assist the bigwigs of the Overseas Investment Department in carrying out a merger and acquisition case with a transaction amount of over 10 billion US dollars.

The target of the acquisition is NVIDIA, which is not very familiar to ordinary people, but is very famous in the gaming circle and also has a certain reputation in the technology circle.

A high-performance graphics processor company.

Wang Hua didn’t know why the company’s top management wanted to acquire the company. He only knew that as a newcomer in the industry, he was fortunate enough to be involved in this sky-high transaction right after joining the company.

What the hell is this...

As long as you are involved, even if you are just doing some minor work, it will be a resume worth bragging about. Looking back, you can say that I am also a big shot who has participated in mergers and acquisitions worth hundreds of billions of dollars. I am a true business elite.

So Wang Hua was full of expectations for this trip, but at the same time he was also somewhat nervous. After all, the scale of this case was too large, and he didn't know if he could really participate in such a high-end transaction.

Of course, these thoughts in his heart were just thoughts buried deep in his heart and could not be expressed.

Before leaving the airport, Wang Hua took out his mobile phone and took a photo of the airport.

After getting on the car, Wang Hua selected the photos he had just taken and several photos he had taken on the plane before, and then posted them on WeChat Moments with the caption: I was born to be a hard worker, and I was sent on a business trip just one week after joining the company...

As soon as the circle of friends was launched, it attracted many people's likes, exclamations, and curiosity...

However, Wang Hua had already gotten over the pure pretense of the past few days, so he didn't reply to anything in the circle of friends.

Instead, I picked up my phone and opened a question-and-answer website that has emerged in the past two years and is quite interesting. After a quick browse, I saw a topic related to the United States and immediately clicked on it to answer it.

Laxative, I'm in the United States, just got off the plane... After editing several hundred words, I chose to publish it anonymously.

They took the branch company's vehicle all the way from the airport and finally arrived at the headquarters of Zhiyun Group's American branch in Silicon Valley.

Zhiyun Group is a global multinational enterprise that also has a branch in the United States, which is not small in scale.

Zhiyun America has three R&D centers, the main one of which is located in Silicon Valley. It mainly involves smart terminal R&D and semiconductor R&D fields, with more than 4,000 R&D personnel of various types.

Zhiyun Group actually has quite a few employees in the United States, totaling about 8,000 people. It is considered a large local enterprise. In addition to the smart terminal business, it also engages in many other businesses.

Although Zhiyun Group has a strong competitive relationship with many American companies and various sanctions have frequently occurred in the past one or two years, conflict is one thing and business is another.

The local talent resources are indeed abundant and of quite high quality.

After all, Silicon Valley is a place that siphons high-end talents from around the world, and where you can find a large number of various high-tech talents.

This is also the reason why Zhiyun Group has deployed a research and development center here, in order to attract outstanding talents here to contribute to Zhiyun Group's various research and development efforts.

Not only in India, in fact Zhiyun will set up R&D centers in any major country in the world.

For example, there is a large-scale R&D center of Zhiyun in Mumbai, India. There are many local software engineers, and they are extremely cheap, making them suitable for use as cheap low-end labor.

We also have a research and development center in Russia, which mainly makes use of the abundant local resources such as mathematicians to develop some algorithms and other things.

Zhiyun's R&D centers are also available in countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Singapore, Japan, and even some medium-sized countries.

For example, in Egypt, Zhiyun has set up a research and development center there, mainly focusing on localized research and development of Zhiyun products in the African market.

Then in Brazil in South America, Zhiyun also has a R&D center, which conducts adaptation and R&D for the South American market.

Zhiyun's various terminal products and services are aimed at the global market, which involves many issues of local optimization. It is impossible to have Zhiyun's Chinese engineers sitting in their offices in China and meet the various complex and huge local adaptation requirements around the world.

This is impossible.

Of course, most of the so-called R&D centers mentioned above, except for a few relatively important ones, are mainly focused on optimizing the local market and do not involve the research and development of some core technologies.

Xu Shenxue would not even give these ordinary overseas R&D centers any research quotas.

Xu Shenxue’s scientific research quota is still very valuable. Even the lowest level D quota needs to be used in some major, innovative development projects.

These core R&D projects are basically all in China, with very few overseas. Even if they are used, they are only auxiliary.

After arriving at Zhiyun's Silicon Valley headquarters, Wang Hua looked at the Zhiyun logo on the building and felt a sense of familiarity, which was a sense of familiarity of seeing one of his own people in a distant foreign country.

If you were to work in other domestic companies, you probably wouldn't be able to experience this special feeling.

Because other domestic companies rarely have as many overseas branches as Zhiyun, and the scale of these overseas branches is relatively large.

Taking the United States as an example, Zhiyun is the largest Chinese company in the United States, and in Silicon Valley, Zhiyun's size and reputation are also extremely large.

Zhiyun USA is a first-tier company in Silicon Valley.

After entering Zhiyun America, Wang Hua also felt that it was different from the headquarters.

The first thing is naturally the people. Although there are many Asian faces here, there are also many people with other faces. In addition to the Chinese, there are white people, black people, Indians, South Americans and so on.

Unlike Zhiyun’s headquarters, although there are some foreign employees, the overall number is very small and the proportion is extremely low. They are all top foreign talents who are specially invited to work at the headquarters.

After entering the company, they had a simple handover with the people from the branch office and were then arranged to rest in a nearby hotel.

They had taken a flight all the way and were quite tired due to jet lag. After a good rest for a day, Wang Hua followed Brother Zhao and others to the branch company to work the next day.

There are many people participating in this project. There are dozens of people here alone. Wang Hua even saw senior executives of the group in the team.

A person whose personal introduction can be found on the company's official website: Xu Libing, Vice President of Zhiyun Group and Executive President of the Strategic Investment Department, a group executive who is able to take business jets for long-distance travel.

Xu Libing used to be the vice president of a large Wall Street investment bank. On Wall Street, this level of expertise is almost the ceiling for Chinese people, especially in corporate mergers and acquisitions.

Previously, he also represented an investment bank and participated in the strategic investment of Zhiyun Group. He once served as a director of the investment bank in Zhiyun Group, and thus established intensive ties with Zhiyun Group.

Two years ago, he was invited by Xu Shenxue to officially join Zhiyun Group as Executive President of the Strategic Investment Department, and was further promoted to Vice President of the Group this year.

This time, when Zhiyun Group is preparing to acquire Inverness, this person is responsible for and leading the acquisition.

Of course, for such group executives, Wang Hua could only watch from the side and was not even qualified to step forward and say a word.

After joining the project team, Wang Hua started a busy work mode, collecting, organizing and analyzing various information all day long, not only about NVIDIA, but also the entire GPU market and the situation of some related companies.

Wang Hua's job is to cooperate with Brother Zhao and other colleagues in their analysis department to collect as much intelligence as possible and then analyze it to provide a basis for decision-making for the bosses above.

To be honest, this was somewhat different from what Wang Hua had imagined. He had once fantasized that after participating in this project, he should be able to participate, even if it was just to watch the negotiation scene between the two parties from a distance.

But in fact, he didn't even know whether the top leaders of both sides had negotiated or when they had negotiated.

His task is just to provide various analytical data.

However, even so, the workload is very heavy. Sometimes, just a command from the superiors would require him and Brother Zhao and others to work overtime or even all night.

So much so that after more than a week here, he didn't even have time to look around and experience the decadent American customs and culture.

I am very busy every day, and then I go back to the hotel and sleep.

Fortunately, this is a branch of our own group, so there will be no difficulty in eating. The branch provides a variety of formal Chinese food to meet the needs of a large number of Chinese employees.

After all, in this branch, quite a number of people, especially the management, are Chinese sent from the headquarters. This is somewhat different from other high-tech companies in Silicon Valley.

After being busy for more than ten days, Wang Hua finally breathed a sigh of relief. The tasks assigned by his superiors became fewer, and he finally had the opportunity to get off work early and go for a walk around the area.

However, for safety reasons, Wang Hua did not go out alone, but went out with several colleagues from the investment department.

One of them is a talkative Brazilian guy named Silva. He immigrated to the United States with his parents when he was a teenager and graduated from Harvard University.

The other is Qian Yanhe, a colleague sent from the headquarters. He was sent to work in the American branch last year.

Wang Hua has been here for about ten days and has had a lot of contact with these two people and had a pretty good time with them.

Well, today is a rare day off, and these three people who have been busy for a long time decided to have some fun today.

Then, Wang Hua was taken to a club by the two men, and for the first time in his life he experienced the joy of having his face kissed by a blonde girl.

You know what, she was pretty good. This blonde girl was really good-looking, with a great figure and good looks. Wang Hua even had a brief chat with her while she was dancing.

I found out that she was an actress and model... and had played small roles with lines, but her acting career was not going well, so she left Hollywood and went to Silicon Valley.

My main job is to be an actor in a drama troupe. When I am not performing, I come here to dance to earn a living, and occasionally I am also a model.

When talking about part-time modeling, the blonde girl gave Wang Hua an expression that everyone understood.

Wang Hua chatted with her while sighing... It seemed that traveling on business here was quite good, and the travel allowance was given directly according to the local level.

If you just walk around, you can see blonde girls of this level.

Fang would never have dared to imagine such a scene before, but now... it seems that this blonde girl in front of him can be taken away with just a small tip.

After the song ended, Wang Hua added her contact information and agreed to go out for a midnight snack after she got off work.

But not long after, Wang Hua and his friends called another group of dancers to come in and dance. This time, the dancer who danced for Wang Hua was prettier than the previous one, and more in line with Wang Hua's aesthetic.

Her dancing became more graceful and free, and she even moved around vigorously while sitting on his lap.

Due to the alcohol and the graceful dance moves, Wang Hua unknowingly forgot about the blonde girl.

After watching several groups dancing, without waiting for Wang Hua to ask the blonde girls out for a midnight snack, the Brazilian guy took the two of them in a taxi and inexplicably ended up at a party.

But it was a little different from what Wang Hua had imagined American parties to be like!
On the small stage in front, a band was performing very hard, the lead singer was singing at the top of his lungs, and heavy metal music resounded in every corner with a strong sense of rhythm.

However, when the song ended and the lead singer was giving all kinds of guidance, saying "let's have fun together", the people below didn't react at all, there were only sporadic cheers!

At the same time, many people present seemed to be clearly divided into men and women. Most of the men were young people, most of whom were unkempt. Many of them wore plaid shirts, and you could tell at a glance that they were programmers.

On the other side, there were quite a few women, most of whom were dressed similarly.

There were quite a few girls walking around in the venue who were dressed coolly and whose figures and looks were obviously better than many of the guests present...but this group of women seemed out of place among the many people present.

At this time, the Brazilian boy pointed at the boy who had just stepped onto the stage and was saying something:

"Did you see that idiot guy in there? An app he made was acquired by Google last month. Wow, it was worth 14 million US dollars!"

Wang Hua listened and looked over. A young man wearing glasses and a plaid shirt was speaking on the stage. At the end he said something like he hoped everyone could have such a fun party every day in the future.

Wang Hua looked around and this party didn't seem to have anything to do with "high"!
At this time, Qian Yanhe beside him said, "He is indeed a lucky guy. He created an image recognition APP with a very good image processing algorithm. However, he used this algorithm to beautify pets. I don't know what his train of thought was."

"Later, I started to switch to portrait processing, where I could replace people's heads."

"This app itself is not worth mentioning, but its graphics processing algorithm is very good. We once tried to acquire this algorithm. After all, we are in a leading position in the field of graphics processing. In order to maintain our advantage, acquiring some potential algorithms is also an important means to block competitors. However, we couldn't reach an agreement on the price and finally gave up. In the end, Google spent more than 20 million US dollars to acquire this small startup company."

"But we didn't lose out. We made Google spend 10 million dollars more than expected to acquire this startup company!"

"Nowadays, Google and other major technology companies have gone crazy in pursuit of artificial intelligence. Anything that has anything to do with AI on the market will be snapped up by them immediately."

Qian Yanhe had a smile on his face as he spoke: "But even so, the gap between them and us is huge!"

While he was talking, several people suddenly came up. One of them was the young man with glasses who had just given a small speech on the stage. He came up and said to Qian Yanhe first: "Qian, welcome to my party, have fun!"

"Then, thank you Zhiyun for your attention. In addition, I am preparing for a new round of entrepreneurship. I will come to my new company when I have time. Maybe we will have new cooperation opportunities!"

The whole person was extremely enthusiastic!

After they said hello and left, Qian Yanhe said, "Just now I said that Gugou spent more than 10 million US dollars to acquire his company. Now you know why he is so polite to me!"

Wang Hua was not stupid. He figured it out after just a few words. It was nothing more than Zhiyun driving up the price, which ultimately made Gugou spend more money to buy it.

Qian Yanhe said: "In fact, our investment department's mission in Silicon Valley, in addition to normal acquisitions and investments in some startups, also has another mission, which is to compete with large companies like Google. We either grab those potential startups before them, or drive up the prices to make Google and other companies spend more money."

“Especially in the field of AI!”

The appearance of the party host quickly attracted the attention of many people, many of whom were obviously technology geeks. They came one after another and tried to sell their websites or APP projects to Qian Yanhe and invited Qian Yanhe to visit their startup companies.

Qian Yanhe said: "Although our company's investment department is not a professional venture capital institution, we will also make some risky investments. Our investment can even give these entrepreneurs greater advantages. After all, we have enormous resources."

"You should be able to feel this in China. Wherever you go, you are surrounded by a group of entrepreneurs. Sigh..."

Wang Hua did not have the opportunity to experience this kind of situation, because he was a novice, and he did not work for the venture capital funds under those groups at the domestic headquarters, but was directly affiliated with the overseas investment department. He was responsible for cross-border investment, acquisition, merger and other projects, and the scale was often relatively large, often involving hundreds of millions of dollars.

It really has nothing to do with ordinary domestic startups, especially those in the Internet industry...that is the business scope of the Future Fund.

Unlike the investment department of Zhiyun’s American branch, which does everything.

When some entrepreneurs began to gather around the three people, they also attracted the attention of some young, beautiful and fashionable girls. Ten minutes later, Wang Hua came out of the crowd, picked up a glass of champagne from the tray in the waiter's hand, and prepared to take a breath... These entrepreneurs were too enthusiastic, so he took this opportunity to introduce various projects to them.

Wang Hua is just a newcomer, and he is an analyst in the overseas investment department of the headquarters. He is here only on a business trip and will return home after finishing his work. He has nothing to do with these things.

At this time, a faint fragrance came: "Looking at you, it seems that you are not suitable for this occasion!"

Wang Hua turned around and saw a blonde, blue-eyed woman wearing a strapless, long, wide dress. Compared to the ordinary American girls with big mouths, this woman's facial features were softer. Her mouth was obviously smaller, and her skin was more delicate and white. She had some obvious Asian facial features and was most likely mixed-race.

Wang Hua immediately said: "Yes, they are too enthusiastic!"

The mixed-race foreign girl said, "You can't blame them for being too enthusiastic. After all, investors are welcome no matter where they are, especially Zhiyun's investors."

Wang Hua was somewhat interested: "Oh, you have a good observation ability."

Mixed-race foreign girl: "Wearing formal clothes, with an Asian face, and surrounded by investors at a tech party, eight out of ten of them were from Zhiyun Investment Department."

Wang Hua said: "So that's it!"

But the next second, the mixed-race foreign girl said: "Actually, I have seen Qian at an investment meeting before... Since you came with him, I guess you are probably from Zhiyun Investment Department!"

Wang Hua: "Your guess is correct!"

At this time, the mixed-race girl raised her champagne and said, "My name is Elizabeth, and I'm your colleague!"

Wang Hua also raised his glass slightly: "My name is Wang Hua. Actually, I am not an investor, I am an analyst."

Elizabeth looked at him, then chuckled, "Well, actually, I'm an investment advisor."

Wang Hua glanced at her and said, "I'm just a newbie. I've only been with Zhiyun for a month."

Elizabeth looked at him, and then after a few seconds she said, "I'm an intern... I came here with my boss."

As he spoke, he pointed to a middle-aged woman who was chatting with someone nearby.

"Many people in Silicon Valley make money too quickly, but don't know how to spend it, especially people in this kind of occasion today... so we came here."

Wang Hua said: "I don't know why I came here. I came here with Qian and Louis."

After saying that, the two of them looked at each other and laughed at the same time.

----

The next day, when Wang Hua woke up in an apartment, he looked at Elizabeth beside him... and felt that everything was ridiculous.

The two of them met for the first time yesterday, and then chatted for a long time at the party. As they chatted, they went out together, and then took a taxi together. When I was sending Elizabeth back to her rented apartment, I didn't know how he followed me up...

In the end, it became like this.

Elizabeth woke up at this time. She smiled when she saw Wang Hua, but she quickly stopped smiling and quickly threw back the quilt and got up: "I'm going to be late!"

"Damn it, that female devil must be cursing again!"

Wang Hua watched her get up quickly, then hurriedly put on her clothes, and then looked at the time. It was almost nine o'clock in the morning.

He was also about to be late, so he hurriedly got up and looked around for clothes.

After getting dressed, Elizabeth, who had already started brushing her teeth, handed him a toothbrush: "This is my spare toothbrush, a new one."

Wang Hua took it and said, "Thank you!"

After the two of them washed up, they walked out quickly... They were still tidying up their clothes as they walked. When they reached the door, Elizabeth opened the door of a car, got in and said to him, "It's hard to get a taxi here. Come up and I'll take you. We're going the same way anyway!"

After Wang Hua got into the car without any hesitation, Elizabeth stepped on the accelerator and the Toyota, which must be quite old, sped away quickly.

After arriving at the company gate, Wang Hua got out of the car. Elizabeth next to him made a phone call gesture to him. After Wang Hua nodded, she drove away directly.

Looking at the car leaving quickly, Wang Hua felt a sense of emotion… He was a little uncomfortable with the fast pace.

But when he thought of Elizabeth's figure and appearance, he couldn't help but smile. This fast pace is actually quite good.

------

While Wang Hua was working hard with other colleagues in Silicon Valley on the acquisition of Nvidia, Xu Shenxue also received a report from the Strategic Investment Department in the distant Shenzhen headquarters.

They have already formally contacted NVIDIA, but the early negotiations were not very smooth as the other party had many demands.

In addition to requiring a relatively high price, the management team also asked Zhiyun to allow Nvidia to maintain independent operations after the acquisition of Nvidia, rather than directly merging it into Zhiyun's existing GPU business. At the same time, the management team also hopes to retain a certain stake.

This roughly means that Zhiyun can acquire investments, but it can only obtain shares as a pure financial investment, and then just take the dividends honestly. NVIDIA will continue to operate independently as it does now.

This is of course unacceptable to Zhiyun.

Even if we don't consider the AI ​​chip, it would not be possible to do this simply as a GPU business. Zhiyun's apparent reason is to acquire Nvidia to fill Zhiyun's last shortcoming in the PC field and obtain a high-performance GPU ecosystem.

Under this model, Nvidia's GPU business and Zhiyun Semiconductor's GPU business must be merged.

The company's management rights must also be under control.

As for pure financial investment, that is simply impossible... When Zhiyun Group makes various strategic investments, especially strategic acquisitions worth tens of billions of dollars, it is not for simple financial investment, but to serve the core business of the group.

The nature of both is different.

Therefore, there were relatively big differences in the initial contact between the two sides!
However, the Strategic Investment Department also suggested that further discussions should be possible, after all, the interests of management and shareholders are not consistent.

The acquisition proposal put forward by Zhiyun is actually quite generous. It is a full acquisition in the form of cash and Zhiyun stock, with a total price of US$10 billion.

This is equivalent to a direct premium of more than one billion US dollars!

And this is just the first round of bids!
Of course, it was precisely because of Zhiyun's generosity that impressed many major shareholders of Nvidia and made them willing to conduct subsequent negotiations with Zhiyun.

As for the management, they only consider their own interests...such as keeping their jobs, getting more options, salary, etc.

There is often a conflict of interest between management and shareholders in such major acquisitions.

This conflict gave Zhiyun's strategic investment department an opportunity to take advantage of the situation, causing internal divisions through interest differentiation, and eventually they agreed to Zhiyun's acquisition.

For example, by releasing a new generation of mid- and low-end graphics cards and engaging in certain price wars, Nvidia's market share can be further eroded, forcing investors to further lose confidence in Nvidia's core business.

There is no need to reduce the other party's core business much, just to curb the other party's growth rate.

As long as the other company's core business growth rate fails to meet expectations, it will be a disaster for the capital market.

Management may not care much about the falling stock price, but shareholders certainly do.

Xu Shenxue was relatively in agreement with the follow-up plans proposed by the Strategic Investment Department. After all, they were acquisition plans made by professional elites.

He immediately instructed Zhiyun Semiconductor's GPU business unit to stop procrastinating and to launch mid-range and low-end graphics cards this month, with lower prices and a cost-effective model... to have a strong impact on the independent graphics card market.

Even if you cannot shake the other party's foundation, you must still stir up some waves.

Under the instruction of Xu Shenxue, the GPU division of Zhiyun Semiconductor officially released two graphics processor cores in December: OPA800 targeting the mid-range market and the low-end OPA600.

It also announced the public version graphics card, the OPA800 graphics card, which is directly priced at 600 yuan, and the low-end entry-level OPA is priced at yuan.

Although the price is low, the hardware level is still quite excellent. If we simply compare the hardware level, the OPA600's price of yuan can basically reach the level of NVIDIA graphics cards of or yuan.

The mid-range graphics card OPA8000 is priced at fifteen hundred yuan, but its hardware level is comparable to Nvidia's graphics cards that cost two to three thousand yuan.

Zhiyun Semiconductor's GPU business unit can be said to be selling its own graphics cards directly at cost price, making it impossible to make any profit at all.

This is a very typical price war!

Although Zhiyun's OPA graphics card ecosystem support capabilities are not very good, it is cheap... and although the ecosystem is not very good, the hardware level is high enough. Relying on the good hardware level, even if it is hard capped, it can still provide a relatively good game support performance.

At the same time, in the field of graphics cards that cost hundreds of yuan, there is actually no need for any very good game support performance. For something that costs only a few hundred yuan, no one expects it to provide good support for 3S masterpieces. It is enough to be able to play some ordinary games.

At the same time, there is still a certain market for this kind of low-end graphics card among some light game players and in the office field.

Of course, another reason is that Zhiyun’s reputation is still very bright... After Zhiyun entered the GPU market in the PC field, many game manufacturers on the market have also begun to optimize Zhiyun graphics cards.

There is no way, because Zhiyun’s name is too famous. Now it seems that the graphics card has just been released, but who can say for sure about the future.

After all, Zhiyun is very strong in the field of mobile GPUs, with more than half of the market share. A large number of mobile software manufacturers and mobile game manufacturers must support Zhiyun GPU's CYAP ecosystem.

Today, Zhiyun Group is determined to force the CYAP ecosystem from mobile to PC, and some of these software manufacturers have chosen to follow suit.

It’s not shameful to hold on to Zhiyun’s thighs!
What’s more important is that many of the current PC software or games and mobile software or games are actually produced by the same company.

For example, a game company has both PC games and mobile games.

Not to mention the software.

This also means that each software manufacturer actually has a large number of software engineers who are proficient in the CYAP ecosystem, which means that when they optimize PC software or games for the CYAP ecosystem, they do not need to hire additional people. Although there will be costs, they are controllable.

Once this trend emerges, it will gradually form a wave.

Zhiyun Semiconductor has shown an attitude that it would rather not make money than not expand the CYAP ecosystem to the PC side, and for this purpose it is even willing to supply independent graphics cards to the market at a low price.

This caused a certain impact on Nvidia.

This impact was soon reflected in Nvidia's sales report: the sales growth rate of their graphics card business in China obviously did not meet expectations. In the third quarter, the year-on-year growth rate of their graphics card business sales was eight percentage points, but by the fourth quarter, the year-on-year growth rate was only two percentage points.

This is a very dangerous signal!

Now it is just a slowdown in growth, but what about the next quarter? Forget growth, I am afraid that sales will even decline year-on-year.

Then the most important thing is that in January, Nvidia also needs to release its financial report. They are a listed company and need to release financial reports regularly.

Especially recently, a new player, Zhiyun, has emerged in the GPU market on the CP side, and many investors are waiting for Nvidia's fourth-quarter financial report.

Nvidia, the leader in the independent graphics card market, occupies 70% of the market share in this vertical niche market. Can they withstand the aggressive attack of Zhiyun?

Despite Nvidia's reluctance, it was finally forced to release its financial report, even though they avoided the important issues in the report and focused on the sales data of their newly launched graphics cards, and the growth rate in the US and European markets, while also talking about some breakthroughs in the field of computing power cards.

However, none of them can distract the attention of sharp-eyed investors.

Fourth quarter revenue increased by 12 percent compared to the same period last year, and net profit was US$150 million, an increase of more than 40 percent compared to last year.

This data seems to be quite good, but it is far worse than the data in the third quarter. The net profit in the third quarter was more than 200 million US dollars, and the growth rate was also very good. Many people thought that NVIDIA would continue the good growth momentum in the third quarter and achieve good results in the fourth quarter.

Unexpectedly, the upward momentum seemed to have reached its peak and began to slow down.

Obviously, this is affected by the slowdown in the growth of their core business, namely the PC GPU business.

The reason for the slowdown is naturally inseparable from the impact of Zhiyun's release of independent graphics cards.

In addition, Nvidia's other businesses are not going well. Its mobile SOC business is even worse than last quarter. Its SOC products, namely Tegra, are getting worse year by year. The Tegra4 released this year was quite good when it was released, but was beaten by Qualcomm in market performance, and then by the Zhiyun W series.

Up to now, Nvidia’s mobile phone SOC business actually has very few customers.

In fact, Nvidia's SOC business, far from making any money, even suffered considerable losses, which seriously dragged down Nvidia's overall net profit.

The growth rate of PC GPU business has slowed down, and it is facing price-performance competition from Zhiyun's independent graphics cards and fierce competition from ATI's independent graphics cards, not to mention that Intel and AMD's integrated graphics are getting better and better, gradually squeezing the living space of independent graphics cards.

It has become increasingly difficult to achieve significant growth in this part of the business.

The mobile SOC business, which was highly anticipated, has become half-dead and is now facing major losses.

In addition, NVIDIA also revealed some internal information, that is, they internally predict that due to the drag of mobile SOC business and the slowdown of PC GPU growth, the revenue in the first quarter of 14 is expected to be only US$ million, and it may even result in losses.

In this situation, what choice will investors make?

Nvidia's stock price fell!

After hovering around 8 billion US dollars for a long time, the company's stock price quickly fell below 81 US dollars, dropping to 7.8 billion in one fell swoop.

Ordinary investors are not in a hurry yet. After all, not all investors are long. Some are still short...and those who are short are all smiling.

But some of the company's major shareholders are anxious...

If it continues like this, the company's stock price will probably fall further, and Zhiyun's bid will be even lower... because in the new round of bidding, Zhiyun directly lowered the price from the previous US$10 billion to US$9.4 billion.

People from Zhiyun said that we are willing to charge a premium, but now the basis for the premium has dropped, so we naturally have to lower the price as well.

Don't worry, there is still a premium now, and the premium ratio has not changed, it is still 12%.

Shareholders want to sell their shares and exchange them for cash or Zhiyun shares.

Management wants to keep options or salaries, and always wants more money, and some management also wants to continue to control management.

Then, in order to protect their own interests, shareholders began to adjust the management at the board meeting... because some management was blocking them from selling the company.

Therefore, what the outside world can see is that after Nvidia released its financial report, the board of directors adjusted several management personnel in the name of business adjustments.

(End of this chapter)