Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 468 This is not the 'globalization' they want

Xu Shenxue has many reasons for pushing his companies to go public in China. In addition to raising funds for investment and development in advanced industries, especially semiconductors, smart manufacturing, electric vehicles and other core areas, he also has conventional business considerations such as further bundling the industrial chain and capital markets to form a community of interests.

Another important reason is macroeconomic considerations.

Xu Shenxue hopes to attract enough funds from the stock market by listing some of his companies as a reserve to cope with crises brought about by more drastic changes in the external environment in the future.

Since the beginning of this year, the external environment has ushered in a series of negative influences, and the Americans have begun to frequently suppress Xu Shenxue's companies.

Weiku Electronics has followed in the footsteps of Zhiyun Group and has been forced to withdraw from the American market. However, the sales of Weiku Electronics' products in the American market were not large to begin with, so the actual impact is not that great.

There are also smart electric vehicles. This started even earlier. Last year, the United States had already taken measures to impose a 100% import tariff on Hailan Automobile. As a countermeasure, domestic imports of American automobiles were also directly subject to a 100% tariff.

Now, the Americans are trying to further curb the rapid development of Xu Shenxue's companies, with Zhiyun Group as the core.

This is essentially a struggle for interests...and it is a struggle for interests in the high-tech field and high-end industrial chain.

They can tolerate and even are happy to see the pure assembly model of Zhiyun Technology in its early days, that is, all core components are imported, and then produced by OEM factories such as Weiku Industrial... In this process, Zhiyun and Weiku can share some profits, but the bulk of the profits will be taken by the other party, and they can also exercise in-depth control through core components.

If you don’t obey, we will cut off the supply of core components to Zhiyun!

This is the most beautiful "globalization" in their eyes: they can obtain a large number of cheap industrial products and a dumping market with a large population and good consumption capacity.

But seeing Xu Shenxue engaging in all kinds of high-tech, playing with semiconductors, and smart manufacturing, not only has he broken free from their restrictions in the field of smart terminals, but he has also engaged in emerging fields such as smart electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, and smart robots... The most disgusting thing is that Xu Shenxue is doing very well and has even surpassed them in many fields.

So they couldn't sit still.

If these high-value-added high-tech fields are taken over by the various enterprises and cooperative enterprises under Xu Shenxue, what will the American consortiums do?
This kind of globalization is not what they want!
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This is also an important reason why the external environment, especially the United States, has further tightened sanctions and restrictions on Xu Shenxue's companies this year.

But it is worth noting that the restrictions imposed by the opposing consortium on Xu Shenxue’s companies do not include semiconductor products…

Because Zhiyun Group is very strong in the semiconductor industry. Not only does it have a complete semiconductor industry chain, but it also leads the world in the field of computing chips, forming a de facto monopoly.

In the field of computing chips, it is not Zhiyun Group that is begging to sell products to them, but they are begging Zhiyun Group to sell products to them!
In fact, since March and April this year, the other side has further tightened restrictions on Zhiyun Group, and even included several subsidiaries of Zhiyun Group in the restricted list.

There are many voices in China hoping that Zhiyun Group will impose a comprehensive ban on the sale of semiconductor products to the United States...especially core hardware products in the field of artificial intelligence such as APO graphics cards.

However, Zhiyun Group did not pay attention to these external voices... Many people are still not clear about some basic logic of the current computing chip market, and even lack consideration.

The basic logic is: Zhiyun Group's APO graphics card is indeed powerful, but it is not too far ahead in the hardware field. AMD is actually able to design similar computing power graphics cards, but the performance is slightly worse at most, and TSMC can also do the foundry work.

The real advantage of APO graphics cards is GPU development and application ecology...

Zhiyun Group’s ecological advantages in the GPU field are certainly strong, but in special circumstances, such as when Zhiyun Group does not sell APO graphics cards, the Americans do have alternative options.

After all, when people can’t buy APO graphics cards, they have no choice but to use their own backward ecosystem... They can’t give up on artificial intelligence just because they can’t buy APO graphics cards, right?

Everyone knows that artificial intelligence is very important. It is a core technology that will influence the next few decades. Now, Zhiyun Group is in the lead, and companies under American consortiums such as Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Apple also want to catch up. At the very least, they must not be left too far behind!

So, they will definitely develop artificial intelligence.

If they can buy APO graphics cards, they will use the mature APO graphics cards. If they cannot buy APO graphics cards, they will use AMD's half-baked GPU computing power graphics cards anyway.

This situation is actually somewhat similar to the situation in the semiconductor equipment field a few years ago. At that time, Gulf Technology under Xu Shenxue also developed a DUV immersion lithography machine. Although the performance was a bit poor and the production efficiency was not very good, it was there after all... So it would be difficult for the other side to ban the sale of ASML's DUV immersion lithography machines.

Since the ban on sales will not have much impact, it is better to open the export business to make the last profit and hit HaiLan Technology's orders at the same time.

Of course, they did not expect that Xu Shenxue was a cheat... They thought it would take many years for Gulf Technology to achieve continuous technological breakthroughs and use the DUV immersion lithography machine as a bargaining chip to get a few more years of benefits. However, they did not expect that Gulf Technology would produce a top-level lithography machine such as the HDUV-600 lithography machine in just a few years.

Nowadays, even a trial model of EUV lithography machine has been developed and is currently undergoing various tests in Zhiyun Microelectronics.

Relatively speaking, a similar situation exists in the field of artificial intelligence and related server GPU computing chips.

However, the companies under the opposing consortium do not have any cheats...

Even if Zhiyun Group continues to sell them APO graphics cards, and even sells top-level graphics cards like APO4600 to them on a regular basis, it will be almost impossible for them to catch up in the field of artificial intelligence, let alone surpass!

Because, while Zhiyun Group sold them the APO4600 graphics card, it was also using the AI5500, which is also based on the nm process but has better performance...

Both of them are manufactured using the 5500-nanometer process, but the AI4600 graphics card is actually the complete version, while the APO is a castrated version. There is still a big performance gap between the two in the field of artificial intelligence training.

In addition, as the equivalent seven-nanometer process enters the formal mass production stage, the new generation of AI6000 graphics cards will be officially mass-produced and delivered starting in June.

The performance of this AI6000 graphics card is several times stronger than that of AI5500, and the APO4600 currently on the market is not even worthy of it!
What’s more important, and what the outside world still doesn’t know is that in the field of server GPUs, Zhiyun Group has begun to try to use superconducting quantum computers to replace traditional server GPUs for artificial intelligence training.

The AI ​​series of graphics cards are Zhiyun Group's 'present' in the field of artificial intelligence.

Superconducting quantum computers are the "future" of Zhiyun Group in the field of artificial intelligence.

Zhiyun Group expects to build the first superconducting quantum computer array in human history by the end of the year. The supercomputer array will be composed of one hundred YCL-51 superconducting quantum computers.

This superconducting quantum computer array will be used for training efficiency in the field of artificial intelligence. It seems that there are only more than 51 YCL-6000 superconducting quantum computers, but the project team predicts that after it is subsequently equipped with internally developed adaptation development software, its performance will exceed that of a supercomputer array with AI graphics cards when conducting artificial intelligence training.

The computing power of 6000 AI graphics cards is already a very large number. Although there are a large number of AI series graphics cards in Zhiyun Group's own GPU server array, many of them are old-generation AI series graphics cards.

If the total computing power of these old AI series graphics cards is converted into AI6000 graphics cards, it is estimated to be around ... and this is the accumulation of Zhiyun Group over the past years.

If all this computing power is replaced by YCL-51 superconducting quantum computers, only three hundred of them would be needed... Of course, three hundred YCL-51 superconducting quantum computers are much more expensive than three hundred thousand AI6000 graphics cards!

The YCL-51 superconducting quantum computer is now a very expensive device that is at the top technological level in human history. Each one is priced at a sky-high price, with the unit price being more than million.

There are more than 51 YCL-s, and the internal purchase price alone is billion.

The internal purchase price of the AI6000 graphics card is about RMB per piece, and pieces only cost more than billion.

At the same time, artificial intelligence cannot currently be fully trained and run using superconducting quantum computers...it still needs to be coordinated with the server GPU in the electronic computer system.

It doesn’t mean that once we have a superconducting quantum computer, we can directly use it to train and run artificial intelligence... The quantum properties of quantum computers mean that they have great advantages in computing in some fields, but their efficiency is very average in some traditional computing tasks.

Therefore, at present, Zhiyun Group is developing and applying superconducting quantum computers in the early stages by coordinating the use of quantum computers and electronic computers.

It will take a long time to completely replace electronic computers with quantum computers, even if it is only in the field of supercomputers.

In particular, further development of superconducting quantum computer technology is needed. Only when a superconducting quantum computer with 500,000 or even 1 million qubits is developed and the corresponding development software is further improved, will complete replacement be possible.

It's still early.

But one thing is certain: the application of superconducting quantum computers, even when used in conjunction with electronic computers, can greatly improve Zhiyun Group's efficiency in subsequent training of artificial intelligence, while reducing the operating costs of super-large artificial intelligence, such as super-large models such as Yun AI.

However, the news that Zhiyun Group is moving towards quantum computers is still a state secret... Well, it is not only a business secret of the company, but also a state secret.

Only technical personnel related to the project team, some senior executives of Zhiyun Group, and some relevant senior executives in the country knew the news.

The outside world still knows nothing about this!
Major technological breakthroughs in the field of superconducting quantum computers and normal-pressure superconducting materials, namely MMK34 materials, have been regarded by senior officials as strategic technological breakthroughs that will dominate the next or even years, and strict confidentiality has been maintained for this purpose.

Before the technical and industrial chain preparations are completed domestically, the news of technological breakthroughs in these two major areas cannot be announced to the public.

Therefore, outsiders do not know that Zhiyun Group's artificial intelligence field has already moved towards the field of superconducting quantum computers.

Based on the advanced self-use graphics card AI6000 and the early application of the YCL-51 superconducting quantum computer, the APO graphics card, which is very important in the eyes of outsiders, is actually not that important...

Otherwise, Zhiyun Group would not sell this thing all over the world!
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Of course, the reason why Zhiyun Group’s APO graphics cards sell so well is also closely related to their complete and mature ecosystem!
When Zhiyun Group acquired NVIDIA, its biggest gain was that it eliminated its core competitor ahead of time.

The second benefit is the acquisition of the CUDA ecosystem... As for Nvidia's previous technologies in areas such as GPU design or the gaming graphics card market, Zhiyun Group doesn't really care...

Later, Zhiyun Group integrated NVIDIA's CUDA ecosystem into its own 'YUDA' ecosystem, namely the 'Zhiyun Unified Development Framework'.

The YUDA development framework covers the development ecosystem of all GPU products under Zhiyun Group, including GPU application development for mobile smart devices, PC-side GPU application development, server GPU application development, and medium and large terminal equipment GPU application development.

It covers areas such as game development, video production, professional design and mapping in smart terminal devices for personal use, such as smartphones, tablets and personal computers; smart electric vehicles and other medium and large smart devices represented by the PX general computing power platform; and smart terminal products with artificial intelligence applications represented by AI glasses.

Finally, the more core thing is the development of server GPU applications based on APO graphics cards... This directly leads to artificial intelligence development.

A third-party analysis agency shows that the YUDA development ecosystem under Zhiyun Group covers 70% of the global smart terminal market, 80% of general computing application platforms, and 99% of the server GPU market!

There are millions of engineers around the world who use the YUDA ecosystem to develop applications... not just in China, a considerable number of them are overseas, including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple, Qualcomm, AMD, Intel and other large high-tech companies in the United States... Yes, even Qualcomm, AMD, Intel and other companies that are competitors, they are actually using this YUDA ecosystem when they play with computing power!
They have previously deployed artificial intelligence models based on the GTAI2 model, which is a very typical YUDA ecosystem application... Without the YUDA ecosystem, even GTAI2 cannot be deployed!
Because GTAI2 is based on the APO graphics card, it does not support other computing chips at all.
Graphics cards must be used in conjunction with a series of YUDA development software. GTAI2 and APO graphics cards, plus the YUDA ecosystem, this trinity has formed Zhiyun Group's near-absolute monopoly in the server GPU market!

In this case, if Zhiyun Group wants to continue to maintain its monopoly position, continue to obtain huge profits, and continue to suppress the challenges of AMD, Intel, Qualcomm and other semiconductor manufacturers in the field of high-performance computing chips!

The best way is not to ban them from selling APO graphics cards, but to open them up for dumping... making it impossible for computing chips from AMD, Qualcomm, Intel and other manufacturers to gain market share and eventually die.

The best way to suppress sales is not to ban sales, but to dump sales!

Otherwise, if Zhiyun Group banned the sale of APO graphics cards today, there would be no need to wait until tomorrow. In a few hours, AMD would announce the restart of its server GPU graphics card plan and invest heavily in research and development as well as the development of a corresponding ecosystem.

In the absence of Zhiyun Group's APO graphics cards, Google, Microsoft and other American companies can only grit their teeth and use AMD's graphics cards, even if they don't want to and dislike AMD's computing power graphics cards in their hearts... You can't expect them to give up artificial intelligence and the future!
Even other companies, such as Tesla, fruit companies, etc. may also participate.

Once enough manufacturers are forced to participate, AMD's GPU development ecosystem will naturally be promoted and replace APO graphics cards!

This is something Zhiyun Group does not want to see.

Therefore, Zhiyun Group decided very early on that as long as the external environment does not change drastically, such as war, complete interruption of trade, etc., APO graphics cards will not be banned from sale. At most, the sales of some advanced products will be selectively restricted, or sales will be limited.

For example, in India, in order to allow domestic smart terminals to continue to enter the local market, Zhiyun Group has taken measures to limit the sales of APO graphics cards in India.

The annual limit is 4500 pieces, and only APO4600 graphics cards are sold, not APO graphics cards. The company also threatens to further reduce supply, forcing the other party to return to the negotiating table.

But even so, there is no complete ban on the sale of APO graphics cards in the Indian market... We can't let American semiconductor companies take advantage of us. Even though the computing chip market in India is not large, Zhiyun Group does not intend to give it to American semiconductor companies!

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This has led to a very strange phenomenon: the Americans are shouting about anti-dumping, anti-subsidy, and comprehensive tax increases, while at the same time coming up with a so-called exemption list... Various computing chips under Zhiyun Group are among them!

However, other products have been affected to a certain extent, such as the intelligent robots under Zhiyun Group. Although the channel dealers in the United States adopted the method of corporate procurement and then leasing them to consumers, they circumvented the impact of the law on some of Zhiyun Group's products.

However, the necessary tariffs will still be added...it’s just that Zhiyun Group doesn’t care. Anyway, the selling price will be increased by the same amount as the tariffs added by the other side.

It is not just the Americans who impose tariffs on Zhiyun Group's products. There are many countries in the world that have tariffs, but Zhiyun Group has never adjusted its pricing system: it always adds various tariffs, local taxes and operating costs based on the offshore wholesale price and then sells at a higher price!
That is why the standard version of the Zhiyun S17 phone is priced at more than yuan in some countries, and to yuan, or even tens of thousands, in some countries.

Zhiyun Group itself has not been greatly affected, but there are still indirect business impacts... After all, in addition to being a smart terminal product, Zhiyun Group is also a semiconductor supplier and a supplier of core components for smart terminals.

Many semiconductor products enter the U.S. market in the form of spare parts that are assembled into products by other manufacturers.

These impacts are not small and may affect the revenue of many companies under Xu Shenxue.

In response to this, Xu Shenxue's economic analysis department also submitted to him a number of analysis reports and some possible countermeasures.

Among them, it is very important to raise funds through large-scale listing of enterprises in the domestic stock market, absorb enough funds as ammunition, and then use them for technological research and development and capacity expansion.

A report from the strategic economic analysis department of Liuhe Investment shows that if this strategy is adopted, multiple companies will be listed in succession within three years, raising approximately 2 trillion yuan in financing from the domestic capital market, which can fully alleviate some of the profit reductions and cash flow reductions that the company's companies may suffer in the next few years.

By the way, it can also stimulate the internal circulation of the economy through the effect of leveraged capital, which will promote the growth of the domestic consumer market to a certain extent, sell more products, and reduce dependence on overseas markets.

A series of companies under Xu Shenxue, with Zhiyun Group as the core, are more or less dependent on overseas markets.

Zhiyun Group is a typical example... Forty-five percent of Zhiyun Group's direct revenue comes from various overseas markets.

At the same time, 15% of indirect revenue comes from overseas markets, namely, the core components such as semiconductors or screens, as well as software and Internet services under Zhiyun Group. Although they are sold to companies in the domestic market, these companies will assemble the components purchased from Zhiyun Group into various terminal consumer products in China for export... Therefore, this part of revenue is actually also indirect overseas market revenue.

Adding the two together, it also means that out of Zhiyun Group's annual revenue of more than 500 billion US dollars, approximately 280 billion US dollars comes from overseas direct and indirect revenue, and the proportion of overseas dependence has reached about 55%!

How to expand the domestic market and reduce dependence on overseas markets has always been what Zhiyun Group’s senior management wanted to do.

But let’s be honest, it’s not easy!
Zhiyun Group is not a small company. It is a behemoth with annual revenue exceeding US$500 billion and a market value of over US$2 trillion!
Just relying on the current size of the domestic market, to be honest, it cannot sustain it...

Zhiyun Group tries to increase the proportion of domestic market revenue every year, but the effect is not obvious!

This does not mean that the domestic market's revenue is not growing. In fact, it has been growing, and the growth rate is very large, from more than US$100 billion a few years ago to more than US$230 billion now.

However, the direct and indirect revenues contributed by overseas markets are also growing simultaneously... and the rate of growth is no less than that of the domestic market.

In the end, the proportion of overseas direct and indirect revenue in Zhiyun Group's revenue still remained at around 55%.

This is a very embarrassing fact!
And this is just the Zhiyun Group!
There is also a Hailan Automobile next to it, whose overseas revenue also accounts for about 30% of its total revenue.

Yihai Technology's overseas revenue also accounts for more than 40% of its total revenue.

Then there are a large number of companies related to Liuhe Investment and Xiannvshan Holdings, especially many domestic smart terminal manufacturers that have a certain degree of dependence on overseas markets.

There is no way. These companies under Xu Shenxue are not only targeting the domestic market, but also the global market. It is normal that overseas revenue accounts for a large proportion.

However, as the external environment is gradually changing, Xu Shenxue must carefully consider the security of overseas markets, and therefore how to further increase the total revenue of the domestic market and reduce dependence on overseas markets.

At the same time, we also need to accumulate more cash flow to cope with future shocks!

In this case, going public becomes one of the options!

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In mid-June, Xu Shenxue visited the headquarters building of Yihai Technology. Besides the inspection, he also discussed the preparations for listing with the management of Yihai Technology.

Since the plan is to carry out a large-scale domestic listing to attract funds for reinvestment, Yihai Technology, which has grown into the largest Internet company in the country, is naturally an important part of the plan.

On the one hand, the potential of Yihai Technology has already been realized, and its subsidiary Doudong Video and cross-border e-commerce businesses have completed the basic layout. Once the potential is realized, the market value will also be realized.

At the same time, Yihai Technology will need to make large investments in the future to gradually improve the global multinational e-commerce market and lead millions of small domestic businesses to enter overseas markets. This requires a lot of capital investment... It is normal to invest heavily in developing new markets.

Therefore, listing financing has become a hard demand.

In a series of listing plans arranged by Xu Shenxue for the next few years, the first is Weiku Industrial, then Yihai Technology, then Hailan Automobile, and then next year Zhiyun Microelectronics will be split and listed depending on the situation.

There are also Huaxing Technology, which is engaged in screens, and Weichi Technology, a subsidiary of X86 chips, which are all subsequent subsidiaries that can be listed.

Then there are some holding companies under Liuhe Investment, such as Ningdai Battery, a power battery company.

In short, the subsidiaries that should be listed will be arranged to be listed one after another!

However, they will not be too dense, because all the companies under Xu Shenxue are large companies with huge scale and extremely high valuations!
If it goes public for financing, it will easily raise hundreds of billions or even trillions of dollars.

Considering the amount of funds available in the domestic capital market, if a large number of companies rush to go public, it will easily drain all the liquidity in the market...which is obviously not a good thing.

Therefore, Xu Shenxue will gradually arrange his companies to go public at intervals according to the amount of funds in the market to avoid any accidents.

At the strategic meeting in the headquarters building of Yihai Technology Group, when the company's senior management learned that Xu Shenxue had finally decided to prepare the company for an IPO, many people were excited!

They know that Yihai Technology will eventually go public, but they have been waiting for year after year and it has still not gone public, and they are getting anxious... It is difficult to cash out the option stocks in their hands at a high price!
They have been looking forward to the company's listing for a long time, but Yihai Technology has been in a period of rapid development and has no shortage of funds, so it has been delayed in listing.

Today, Yihai Technology has launched a global short video plus multinational e-commerce and advertising strategy and has a need for financing. At the same time, Xu Shenxue also wants to push Yihai Technology to go public to form a new round of interest bundling and stimulate the domestic capital market at the same time.

In this way, Yihai Technology has the foundation for listing!

The senior management of Yihai Technology is extremely excited about this.

Just three days later, a preliminary plan for preparing for the listing was submitted to Xu Shenxue... These people couldn't wait to see the scene of themselves becoming billionaires after Yihai Technology went public!

After Yihai Technology had initially finalized its listing plan, Xu Shenxue then went to Hangzhou and arrived at the headquarters of Huaxing Technology.

The main purpose of going to the local area was to attend the commissioning ceremony of the large-scale OLED screen production base under Huaxing Technology. This new production base has the most advanced and top-level OLED screen production line, and can subsequently provide Zhiyun Group with top-level fourth-generation OLED screens.

On the other hand, it is also to meet with several other major shareholders of Huaxing Technology to discuss the listing plan of Huaxing Technology.

After holding several meetings at Huaxing Technology, Xu Shenxue returned to Shenzhen on a special plane.

Three days later, at the Zhiyun Group headquarters in Shenzhen, Xu Shenxue met with more than a dozen shareholder representatives of Zhiyun Group to discuss the possibility of Zhiyun Group listing on the Hong Kong stock market and issuing some shares on the domestic stock market at the same time, thereby listing in both places.

Xu Shenxue held high-level meetings in many of his companies in succession, and the topic of listing was discussed in all of them. This news became gossip and began to spread within the circle, and even appeared on the Internet.

This has caused a lot of speculation.

Everyone knows that Xu Shenxue is planning to push some of his companies to go public in China, but they probably wouldn't have guessed... that the scale of the listing would be so huge!
(End of this chapter)