Cambrian, which was once dubbed by investors as the “No. 1 NPU stock in China”, fell off the altar due to the breakdown of its partnership with Huawei. Now Liang Jun, the company’s core technician, has also chosen to leave. The departure of this "Huawei-related" executive may mean that Cambrian and Huawei have officially parted ways.
The “marriage” between Cambrian and Huawei is coming to an end.
On the evening of March 14, Cambrian issued a major personnel change announcement. The announcement stated that Liang Jun, the company's core technical backbone CTO, had notified the company to terminate his labor contract on February 10 due to "disagreements with the company." After his resignation, he will no longer hold any position.
CTO Liang Jun is regarded by the outside world as an important link in the "marriage" between Cambrian and Huawei. With Liang Jun leaving, it may mean that Cambrian and Huawei have officially parted ways.
More than a year ago, Cambrian attracted much attention when it was listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board. On the first day, its stock price rose by more than 300 yuan, and its market value exceeded 100 billion. However, in less than two years, Cambrian, which was dubbed "the number one AI chip stock in China", quickly fell from the altar.
Shareholders significantly reduced their holdings, the stock price hit a record low, and the chief technology officer left... Cambrian, what happened to the once unparalleled unicorn?
Liang Jun left Huawei, and the "marriage" officially broke down
"Liang Jun's departure will not affect the company's technology Innovation will not have a major adverse impact on the company's overall R&D strength, and there are no intellectual property disputes between the two parties. The integrity of the company's intellectual property will not be affected..."
Although Cambrian used a series of negative sentences to actively express its stance to the outside world, but the news of Liang Jun's departure still hit Cambrian hard.
After the news of Liang Jun's resignation was released, Cambrian's stock price closed down 18.38 points the next day, its market value evaporated by more than 3.6 billion, and its total market value was only 26.057 billion yuan.
Public information shows that Liang Jun joined Huawei in 2003 and later became a technical expert for HiSilicon. He was responsible for the HiSilicon team in mobile phone SOC design and network chip architecture design. After leaving Huawei in 2017, he joined Cambrian as deputy general manager and CTO.
As a former employee of Huawei, in the first year after Liang Jun joined Cambrian, Cambrian started IP licensing with Huawei terminal chips. Some voices in the market pointed out that Liang Jun played a crucial role in this cooperation.
After embracing Huawei's "leg", Cambrian's performance has experienced explosive growth, laying the foundation for the company's future listing.
According to the company's prospectus data, from 2017 to 2019, Cambrian's sales amount to Huawei's HiSilicon terminal intelligent processor IP licensing business was 7.7127 million yuan, 1.14 billion and 63.658 million yuan, accounting for 100.00%, 97.94% and 92.56% of the company's terminal intelligent processor IP licensing business sales revenue.
It is worth noting that in 2017 and 2018, terminal IP accounted for 98.33 and 99.69 of Cambrian's main revenue. It can be said that without Huawei, the commercialization process of Cambrian's AI chips would not have gone so smoothly.
For a start-up company, being a leader in the industry may be a matter of life and death for the company.
Or in order to retain Liang Jun, Cambrian granted 100,000 incentive stocks to Liang Jun in December 2020. According to the agreement, the 80,000 unvested shares granted to Liang Jun after his resignation were invalidated. Based on the company's current stock price of 65.22 yuan/share, the value of this part of the stock is about 5.22 million yuan.
In addition, the 37.6 shares of Beijing Aixi Technology held by Liang Jun also need to be transferred based on a certain paid-in cost plus a repurchase price of 5% interest. In other words, Liang Jun's resignation is almost like leaving home. For what reason did such an industry giant choose to leave?
Expedient measure,
The "spare tire" Cambrian was abandoned
External speculation , after Huawei separated from Cambrian to develop its own artificial intelligence chips, Cambrian has become Huawei's "abandoned son". Liang Jun's departure was actually an act of self-rescue because he saw no way out for Cambrian.
At a summit in 2019, a Cambrian executive revealed that Cambrian is conducting technical evaluations with many leading Internet companies, including Kuaishou, Didi. However, an industry insider who once worked for Didi Cloud said that during his tenure, although there was cooperation, there was actually no specific project use because the product was "not easy to use."
In addition, Cambrian previously announced that its chips have been implemented in Baidu. Although the news is true, according to industry insiders, the number of chips used by Baidu is only about a hundred, and they are not used in core business.
"Cambrian is not weak in technology, but its products cannot be said to be better than those of traditional manufacturers." The first demand of customers such as large Internet companies is security and stability , why give up those mature chips and use untested chips from a small company? An industry insider said so.
The products in hand frequently encounter difficulties in the commercialization process. How did Cambrian win Huawei's favor in the first place? Or is it that the cooperation between Huawei and Cambrian was just a stopgap measure from the beginning?
In 2016, Cambricon launched Cambricon-1A, the first AI processor, establishing its status as China’s first AI unicorn company. At that time, the AI ??concept was sweeping the world.
Not long ago, in 2017, the mobile phone giant Apple moved this popular AI chip technology to the upcoming iPhone 11.
Huawei naturally does not want to lag behind in this wave of intelligence. In order to seize the title of "the world's first built-in independent NPU smartphone", Huawei decided to use the Kirin 970 chip China integrates Cambrian’s AI processor IP.
However, Huawei has been downplaying the origin of its AI processor in subsequent publicity activities. At the same time, there are signs that Huawei used Cambrian AI technology to develop the Kirin 970 in 2017. For years, Huawei HiSilicon has been cooperating with ARM to develop AI technology based on the ARM Trillinum framework.
Risks are brewing. Huawei HiSilicon released cloud and edge chips in 2018, and has since been committed to covering all scenarios of data centers, edge terminals and consumer terminals, which happens to be Cambrian's business line. This also means that in the future, in the fields of terminal, cloud, and edge artificial intelligence chip products, a head-on confrontation between Huawei HiSilicon and Cambrian is inevitable.
Shortly thereafter, in October 2018, Huawei announced the adoption of its self-developed "Da Vinci architecture". In 2019, Huawei's Kirin 810 processor was equipped with a self-developed AI chip.
Huawei has its own AI chip. The most direct result is that Cambrian’s business structure has undergone a major change in 2019. The IP licensing business supported by Huawei Revenue fell off a cliff, and Cambrian's main source of revenue became intelligent computing system integration.
Losing Huawei as a major customer is undoubtedly a huge loss for Cambrian. Cambrian also bluntly stated that "it will be difficult for the company to expand a company that can replace Huawei in terms of procurement scale in the short term." The company is a customer of Huawei. ”
Huawei succeeds and Huawei fails
According to the company’s prospectus data, in 2019 , Cambrian's terminal intelligent processor IP license sales revenue declined year-on-year, only 68.7712 million yuan, and its proportion in main business revenue also dropped to 15.49. This number was 98.34 and 97.63 in 2017 and 2018 respectively.
In addition, according to the prospectus disclosed by the company at that time, the company’s investment projects listed on the Science and Technology Innovation Board did not include any IP research and development content.
This also attracted inquiries from the Shanghai Stock Exchange. In the letter, the Shanghai Stock Exchange asked Cambrian to explain: "The future business plan and sustainability of this part of the business, and whether there is a gradual abandonment of this part." Business trends. ”
You must know that in just one year, the company’s main business has become tasteless and useless. business.
Without the support of Huawei’s business, Cambrian had no choice but to find other options, and the company’s second largest shareholder, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, became the only choice.
On April 25, 2019, the Administrative Committee of Zhuhai Hengqin New Area signed a cooperation agreement with the Institute of Computer Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences to build the Hengqin Advanced Intelligent Computing Center project.
This project has replaced the IP licensing business and become the "backbone" supporting the company. In addition to the Hengqin project, Cambrian also signed a contract to win the Fengdong Artificial Intelligence Computing Innovation Center project in Xixian New District, Xi'an in 2019.
After comparing the company’s 2019 financial data and the performance volume contributed by the two government IDC projects in Zhuhai Hengqin and Xi’an Fengdong, it is not difficult to find that in 2019 these two The project contributed approximately 80% of revenue to Cambrian, of which the Hengqin project contributed 60% of revenue.
Although these two projects generate substantial income, the relationships behind them and the strategic considerations of attracting local investment greatly reduce their commercial value.
A chip company has become a "related party" for IDC contracting. However, with the support of these two government IDC projects, the company successfully entered the A-share market.
Just after listing in the A-share market, investors in the secondary market did not pay for the company's high valuation. The company's stock price has been falling since it hit a historical high of 297.77 yuan per share on the fourth day of listing. As of press time, the company's stock price was trading at 66.25 yuan per share, a drop of nearly 80% from the highest price.
In the short term, it is difficult to say that the company's fundamentals have reversed.
According to the 2021 annual performance report released by Cambrian, the company's operating income in 2021 was 721 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.712; at the same time, the net loss attributable to the parent was 847 million yuan, and the net loss attributable to the parent in the same period last year was 435 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 9.498.