Reborn in 2010, the AI ​​in my mind is too powerful.

As one of the three major EDA companies today, KaiDen has not had a smooth journey in its history. It has encountered many major setbacks, the biggest of which almost did not survive.

In 1999, after CEO Joe Costello resigned, the company experienced a major internal power struggle, and the stock price plummeted from $30 to $4. EDA industry analysts unanimously predicted in their year-end reports that Calden would be ousted within one or two years, either through acquisition or bankruptcy.

However, Ray Bingham was appointed CEO in a time of crisis. After taking over, he cut most of the non-core business lines and the entire peripheral department. After the massive layoffs that terrified the employees, he persisted in operating the company for several years before pulling it back from the brink of collapse.

In the following years, the company operated smoothly, and Ray Bingham was promoted to chairman, handing over the CEO position to a good-for-nothing poached from Intel.

This idiot did a great job at Intel before, but the problem was that he was in charge of large-scale industrial operations management.

When he came to Kaiden, he continued his consistent approach, emphasizing processes, records, and Six Sigma (a zero-defect quality management method).

Then, after four years, the company started to die again. The reason was simple: KaiDeng's core assets were a group of extremely proud algorithm PhDs. They were different from blue-collar workers; they were smarter, and if they weren't respected, they would really leave.

Gao Dewei switched jobs around that time; many researchers resigned during those years.

Then in 2009, board member Chen Liwu was appointed to take over Kaiden, which was suffering from low morale and a serious loss of talent.

He is a Singapore-born Chinese who graduated from MIT with a bachelor's degree in nuclear engineering.

However, he is not a technical person. He is the founding partner of Walden International, who has managed a venture capital fund of two billion US dollars. In his career, he has invested in dozens of semiconductor companies, including SMIC and Spreadtrum, which are new Chinese companies.

His mindset has always been that of a venture capitalist; he is completely different from Synopsys' current CEO.

Synaptics' CEO is its founder, Art DeGias, a pure tech geek who will never back down when it comes to technical issues. That's why he fought tooth and nail with Chen Yiran just to get the DeepFlow license.

Chen Liwu does not prioritize technology; he only pursues the company's profits.

So even though he initially agreed to DeGias's proposal and, together with Synaptics, launched a furious lawsuit against FlowEDA.

But two months later, when he realized that this path was blocked, he immediately prepared to slide on his knees.

After all, among the three giants of EDA, Mingdao mainly focuses on the manufacturing end.

In the competition for the number of columns, Kaiden has been overtaken by Xinshi for quite some time.

Now that FlowEDA has emerged, Chen Liwu is very afraid that this will become a common occurrence in the capital market.

The eldest and second eldest brothers got into a fight and killed the third eldest brother.

In any case, the joint litigation agreement they signed with Xinshi has little legal effect.

After a week of consideration and careful calculation by financial analysts, Chen Liwu dispatched Li Feifei, Vice President of Kai Deng.

She planned to secretly contact Chen Yiran, hoping to flirt with her.

That's easy. Gao Dewei and Li Feifei are old acquaintances. Li Feifei called Gao Dewei directly and even told him about Kai Deng's idea.

Gao Dewei didn't know what Chen Yiran was thinking, but instinctively felt that this was an opportunity, so he quickly helped Chen Yiran make an appointment.

Finally, after three months of legal battles between the two sides, Chen Yiran met with a senior executive from one of the parties at home and began to seriously discuss the distribution of post-battle benefits.

Li Feifei sounds like a girl's name, but he's actually a burly man with a dark face. He could play Li Kui without looking out of place if he changed his clothes.

He was wearing a dark blue suit, which looked very out of place.

Chen Yiran was stunned when he saw it.

Li Feifei was already quite used to this kind of reaction, and said with a smile, "Hello, Mr. Chen, haha, I used to play rugby in college. Unfortunately, I came to the United States after college, so I started too late, and my talent was just average, so I didn't achieve much in the end. But I did develop this tanky physique."

"Hello, hello. Although there are some unpleasant things between our two companies, the senior engineer told me that you two are quite familiar with each other, so I won't say anything polite. Can you tell me the purpose of your visit?"

"Okay, okay, I'd also like to reach a preliminary agreement with you as soon as possible. I was sent here because I'm also Chinese, and it's easier to communicate since we're all on the same side. I'm from Singapore, as is the current CEO of Kaden. You could say our two companies have something in common."

Chen Yiran waved his hand, then said while stroking the egg that had come closer, "I told you not to say anything polite. You guys want Deepflow too? To be honest, I'm not really keen on giving it to you."

"Then I'll be frank. Mr. Chen, Cadden wants to withdraw from this joint patent lawsuit. We are withdrawing our case independently, and we will no longer pursue any of the six patent claims involving FlowEDA. Going forward, Cadden hopes to become your company's global business partner."

"How exactly will we cooperate?"

Li Feifei took a folded piece of paper out of her briefcase. It wasn't a formal company contract; it was just a few lines of handwritten text.

"Kidden's global sales team has more than a thousand people. We are the exclusive distributor of FlowEDA's entire pet store suite, Grey, Kiki, Tiya, and all subsequent EDA software."

Kaiden will also be responsible for customer support, training, deployment, and daily maintenance in all regions. All simple technical support will be handled by our staff; only product-level bugs will be sent back to FlowEDA for processing. Revenue will be split 30/70, with you receiving 70% and us 30%.

Chen Yiran glanced at the piece of paper, then looked at Gao Dewei, who had been silent the whole time.

Gao Dewei leaned closer and whispered, "Don't consider my opinion. You know I'm a scaredy-cat. I was terrified three months ago, and I spent so much on lawyer fees. If it were me, I would have given in long ago."

Chen Yiran was helpless. He asked Gao Dewei because Gao Dewei was familiar with Kai Deng, but who knew that Gao Dewei couldn't offer any advice.

After thinking for a moment, he asked, "What about your existing digital design and R&D team?"

"We will shut down our entire self-developed digital design product line. Some of our R&D team members can move to your product line for collaborative development, while others will be reassigned to the analog and packaging product lines. Kaiden will completely abandon digital EDA and focus solely on analog circuit EDA."

Chen Yiran understood. Yes, analog circuit EDA is the foundation of Kaiden's business, which is why they were willing to abandon other businesses.

The EDA industry has three main segments: digital design and manufacturing, and analog circuits, which have the deepest moat.

Chen Yiran has already entered the game with the first two, and victory is even in sight. But as for analog circuits, he really won't be able to touch them at all in the short term.

Analog mixed-signal EDA is the design and simulation of analog circuits, namely amplifiers, sensors, power management, and radio frequency circuits.

This is a world of voltage, current, noise, temperature drift, and parasitic effects; the complexity and uncertainty of the physical world far exceed those of digital logic.

This industry relies almost entirely on the intuition and experience of senior engineers.

Chen Yiran and Jasmine had previously researched many related papers, hoping to break the deadlock with a better framework and algorithm.

But ultimately, it didn't work. Jasmine even pessimistically believed that even in another ten years or so, there would be no way to achieve it. At most, some assistance could be provided, but automation was basically out of the question, and a lot of manual labor would still be required.

Chen Yiran carefully calculated the gains and losses, then mentally asked Jasmine: What do you think? Did we lose out? I don't feel as comfortable as swallowing Mingdao, but it's alright.

Financially speaking, we shouldn't lose money. First, we've saved a lot on legal fees. Second, their technical and sales teams can help us distribute our products in large quantities, allowing us to quickly capture the market. I also don't recommend further negotiation; this price is already very competitive.

Otherwise, it would take us one or two years just to recruit the staff ourselves, and in reality, they would be outsourcing to us. We don't need to recruit so many peripheral technical personnel; we only need to maintain a high-quality core technical team.

From a clandestine poaching perspective, it's not a big problem. When we go back to various version updates and technical discussions, we can easily find skilled people within KaiDeng. We can simply network with them; it's unlikely that technical staff will refuse a move from an outsourcing company to a core technology company.

Chen Yiran felt that it was indeed a win-win and acceptable condition. He smiled, stood up, and extended his hand, saying, "It's a pleasure to cooperate with you."

Li Feifei was very happy and quickly stood up to shake hands with Chen Yiran: "Okay, I'll go back now. Our lawyers are communicating a lot right now, so let's quickly tell them to stop fighting and start discussing cooperation."

After seeing Li Feifei and Gao Dewei off, Chen Yiran thought of Icahn again.

That dog of Wall Street! He actually betrayed me. I will never work with him again, and I'm going to pull off a big stunt to get revenge.

Icahn wanted to sell Mingdao's high-quality assets for money, right? So he turned all of Mingdao's assets into non-performing assets!