Weisiwei
Soon after the start of 2020, the "investment company" millet began to take action again.
Warren Buffett said, "I'm fearful when others are greedy, and I'm greedy when others are fearful", and at a time when the global economy is on the brink of a crisis, Lei Jun's Xiaomi Industrial Fund is already in greedy mode.
From January 16, millet group through its Hubei millet Yangtze River Industrial Fund Partnership (limited partnership), referred to as millet Yangtze River Industrial Fund, in just over two months, has invested in Dio Microelectronics, Lingdang Microelectronics and Avantage Technology and other eight semiconductor companies.
This wave of operation, from November 19, 2019, Xiaomi's first investment in Speed Semiconductor is just less than half a year. So far, millet supply chain investment map a corner, semiconductor layout has expanded to 19, covering Wi-Fi chips, radio frequency (RF) chips, MCU sensors and FPGAs and other areas.
Micron's core dream did not stop.
In October last year, Wisdom had a survey report on millet's supply chain investment, centering on millet's ecological chain and supply chain investment strategy, especially in the semiconductor field. ("Xiaomi breakout war: two years of investment in 12 supply chain enterprises layout and fight, Lei Jun and how many cards?")
Xiaomi revealed in its second quarter 2019 financial report that as of June 30, 2019, it **** invested in more than 270 companies, with a total book value of 28.7 billion yuan, an increase of 20.8% year on year. Meanwhile, as of August 20, it has invested in 12 supply chain companies covering semiconductor to smart manufacturing sectors.
Among them, it invested in 8 semiconductor companies, not only in the short term for its own "AI + AIoT" dual-engine strategy to provide the continuation of power, but also for the long-term impact of the chip R & D market, through the industrial chain "veins" buried The company's technology has been a major factor in the success of the company's business.
And these are millet in the surging S2 chip after the abortion, for the semiconductor industry chain "self-help" and the new way to play.
With a series of investment actions of Xiaomi in 2020, Wisdom decided to focus on Xiaomi's semiconductor investment planning again, and explore the layout and progress of Xiaomi in the semiconductor field at the same time, but also to figure out the strategic thinking and changes hidden behind it.
At the same time, Xiaomi's industrial chain investment tactics can really create a new technology layout play? The long way to go, millet core road and reflect the Lei Jun's ambitions and expectations?
In February of this year, at the first product launch of Xiaomi in the beginning of the year, the flagship Xiaomi 10 has once again caused the industry heat, which supports the product performance of the protagonist, also upgraded from the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 to Snapdragon 865.
The Snapdragon 865 "halo" is supported by the back of the Xiaomi Surge S2 "bleak" third year.
The term "self-research chip" has gradually become another weakness of Xiaomi since the launch of the Xiaomi 5C phone and its surging S1 in 2017, and this is a story that has long been told by the industry as "rotten".
In 2018, since Xiaomi's semiconductor company Pinecone Electronics reorganization, the establishment of Nanjing Big Fish Semiconductor, Xiaomi's self-research core road in the outside world seems to have stopped the pace.
Although a year later, Big Fish Semiconductor jointly released a NB-IoT SoC chip called U1 with Pingtou***, oriented to the field of IoT, with built-in GPS and PA (Power Amplifier Chip), and support for BeiDou NB-IoT R13, it didn't make much of a splash in the market. Looking back, I don't know when, the official website of Pinecone Electronics has also long been dusty, showing that it is not accessible.
But contrary to the slow process of Xiaomi's self-research chip, Xiaomi's semiconductor investment moves are gradually accelerating.
On January 23, 2018, Xiaomi's ZiMi Technology and Lei Jun's partnership with Shunwei Capital, engaged in integrated circuit (IC) research and design semiconductor companies - South Core Semiconductor A round of investment, the transaction amount of tens of millions of yuan, the first shot of Xiaomi's foot in the semiconductor investment battlefield.
Subsequently, two years, millet investment "engine" continues to accelerate, one after another into the cloud Yinggu Technology, Lexin Technology, core original microelectronics and other 19 semiconductor companies, covering the display driver chip, MCU sensors, Wi-Fi chips and radio frequency chips and other areas. Among them, Juchen Semiconductor, Lexin Technology and Brilliance Semiconductor 3 companies, has been successfully listed on the Science and Innovation Board.
And this rush of millet also continued into 2020, and showed more momentum in the market.
Since January 16, Xiaomi's Hubei Xiaomi Yangtze River Industry Fund Partnership (limited partnership), referred to as the Yangtze River Xiaomi Industry Fund, has invested in eight semiconductor companies in two months***, with seven new investments, far more than the previous frequency.
According to publicly available statistics, the eight semiconductor companies were Dio Microelectronics, Speed Semiconductor, Core Baxter Microelectronics, Fortior (peak work technology), Onray Microelectronics, Avantage Technology, Lingdang Microelectronics, and Han Xin Microelectronics.
1, the emperor of microelectronics
Founded in February 2010, the emperor of micro, is a hybrid analog semiconductor IC design and manufacturing company, its founder and chairman of the board of directors, Ju Jianhong graduated from the State University of New York, majoring in electrical engineering, in the official founding of the emperor of micro before he worked in the United States, the Centro
Ju Jianhong, the founder and chairman of the board, graduated from the State University of New York with a degree in electrical engineering.
Currently, DioMicro provides chipset solutions for consumer electronics, smart home, LED lighting, medical electronics and industrial electronics, including LED lighting components, ultra-low power and low noise amplifiers, high-efficiency power management electronics, as well as a variety of analog audio/video components.
As of July 1, 2019, DioMicro has applied for 65 patents of various types. Among them, 15 invention patents and 17 utility model patents have been granted.
According to the public information of the Management Committee of Jiangsu Nantong Sutong Science and Technology Industrial Park, on June 30, 2019, Dio Micro has been listed in the track of the Science and Technology Innovation Board.
And on January 16, 2020, Dio Micro also ushered in a strategic financing from Xiaomi, whose shareholders added the Yangtze River Xiaomi Fund with a 17.23% stake, but about the amount of the transaction has not been disclosed.
2, LingDong Microelectronics
LingDong Microelectronics is a MCU chip and solution provider, was founded in March 2011, its chairman and CEO Dr. Wu Zhongjie graduated from Southeast University, with a number of large-scale chip design company work experience.
In terms of products, Nimble Microelectronics has developed the MM32 series of MCUs based on the Arm Cortex-M0 and Cortex-M3 cores, mainly in the F/L/W/SPIN/P series, targeting the general-purpose high-performance market, ultra-low-power and security applications, wireless connectivity, motor and power specialization, as well as OTP (One Time Programmable) type MCUs, which are designed for the general-purpose, high-performance, ultra-low power and security applications, wireless connectivity, motor and power specialization, and OTP (One Time Programmable) type MCUs.
In fact, as early as August 31, 2015, LingDong Microelectronics has been listed on the New Third Board, but the company released a notice in 2019 that it will terminate the stock listing from March 14, announcing the delisting.
Immediately following the expansion of Xiaomi's semiconductor industry chain investment, Xiaomi has also focused its investment on the MCU technology advantages of LingDong Microelectronics. On January 19th of this year, Nimble Microelectronics received strategic financing funds invested by the Yangtze River Xiaomi Industry Fund, and the registered capital increased to 56.68 million yuan, an increase of 19.88%.
At the same time, Xiaobo Wang, managing partner of Xiaomi Industrial Fund, became the new director of Nimble Microelectronics.
3, Core Baxter Microelectronics
Compared to other semiconductor companies invested by Xiaomi, Core Baxter, which was founded in October 2018, is particularly young.
It is understood that the company's founder and CEO, Haitao Zhang, graduated from Tsinghua University with a master's degree in microelectronics, went to the United States to study to obtain a doctorate degree from the Department of Microelectronics at the University of California, and has more than 10 years of work experience at Qualcomm, TriQuint and RFaxis. He has also led the R&D team responsible for Apple iPhone 5/6 and Texas Instruments WiFi RF terminal projects.
Vibrant mainly utilizes high-performance RF chip technology for the design and development of wireless communication RF devices, with product layout in 5G, Wi-Fi and IoT fields, targeting multiple markets such as communication devices, consumer electronics, automotive electronics, medical electronics and smart devices.
Currently, the company has developed products such as Wi-Fi 5 front-end modules (FEMs), 5G communication power amplifiers and RF switches, and has entered into partnerships with companies such as Xiaomi, Lenovo, China Mobile and China Telecom.
On January 21st of this year, CoreBuilder also disclosed its first equity financing, with the Changjiang Xiaomi Industry Fund investing RMB 560,300,000, with a shareholding of 4.33%, making it the seventh largest shareholder of the company.
4, the peak of the work technology (Fortior)
Founded in May 2010, the peak of the work of technology, is a relatively low-profile IC design company, the main research and development of motor drive control special chip.
According to the survey, founder and CEO Bi Lei was selected for the eighth batch of "Thousand Talents Program" by the Ministry of Organization of the People's Republic of China (MOOC) in 2012, and CTO Bi Chao was also selected for the eleventh batch of "Thousand Talents Program" in 2015, which is the first time that China has implemented the "Thousand Talents Program" for the introduction of returned talents. This is an important talent policy for the introduction of returning talents.
At the same time, Bi Chao is a post-doctoral advisor at the National University of Singapore, a senior member of the IEEE, and a former senior scientist at the Singapore Science and Technology Agency, with extensive R&D experience in the field of motor technology.
▲Peakworks CTO Bi Chao
Currently, Peakworks has set up two R&D centers in China and Singapore.
It has developed a full range of brushless DC motor drive products, including three-phase BLDC dedicated control chips, single-phase BLDC dedicated control chips, motor-specific MCU series, etc., which are widely used in terminal equipment, drones, consumer electronics, home appliances, and medical equipment, etc., through a number of three-phase, single-phase Hall-free brushless DC drive and other core technologies.
In April 2014, the peak of the work technology to obtain the transaction amount of tens of millions of yuan of A round of financing. The strategic financing made public on January 21 this year, it is invested by millet Yangtze River Industry Fund, ZTE Venture Capital and other institutions, of which millet invested 1,297,200 yuan, equity ratio of 1.87%.
5, Onray Microelectronics
Onray Micro has just moved to a new home, Xiaomi invested 3,107,100 yuan on February 20, is undoubtedly a good news to add to the good news, before this, Onray Micro has not been seven years to increase capital. It is understood that after this investment, Xiaomi's equity share is 6.98%, becoming the third largest shareholder of Onray Micro.
At the same time, this investment in O-Net will also be used for 5G cell phone terminal RF front-end chip, as well as a new generation of IoT SoC chip research and development.
Founded in July 2012, ONR Micro is one of the key RF/analog IC design and development manufacturers in China.
It has developed a series of RF front-end and wireless connectivity chips, such as 2G/3G/4G/5G RF front-end chips, Bluetooth low-power (BLE) chips, dual-mode Bluetooth chips, low-noise amplifiers, and other RF front-end and wireless connectivity chips, with more than 200 mass-produced chips, through the long-accumulated RF processes such as CMOS, SiGe, GaAs, and GaN, and targeting the field of cell phone terminals and the Internet of Things.
It is understood that the chips developed by O-Network have covered consumer areas such as mobile terminals, wearable devices, drones and smart homes, and customers include manufacturers such as Samsung Electronics, Foxconn, ZTE, TCL and Lenovo.
6, Speedway Semiconductor
Compared with other traditional chip makers, Speedway Semiconductor, founded in July 2018, is also relatively young, is a Wi-Fi 6 chip design company, but it is the only non-new investment in Xiaomi's 2020 semiconductor investment.
In fact, the Yangtze River Xiaomi Industry Fund took a stake in Speedway Semiconductor on November 19, 2019, becoming the company's sixth-largest shareholder, and this is also Xiaomi's last investment in semiconductors in 2019.
Based on Speedway Semiconductor's chip R&D technology in the Wi-Fi 6 field, Xiaomi decided to increase its weight and led the company's Series A financing on February 20 this year, followed by Youtube Capital. So far, the registered capital of Speedway Semiconductor has grown from the initial 10.4 million RMB to 13 million RMB, an increase of 25%.
In addition to further expanding the engineering and R&D team, Speedway Semiconductor plans to utilize this investment in the development and mass production of Wi-Fi 6 SoC products.
It is reported that the company's core R&D team has more extensive experience in Wi-Fi 6 standardization, and has previously developed more than 20 unlimited SoC chipsets for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and cellular 4G worldwide.
The company is also accelerating the development and mass production of the next generation of Wi-Fi 6 chipsets to further meet the strong demand for Wi-Fi 6 chips.
7. Avantage Technology
Avantage Technology is a baseband chip design company that mainly develops mobile terminal devices, IoT, navigation, and other consumer electronic chips, founded in 2015, and in August 2017, it received a round of A financing invested by Alibaba's and SZV, with Alibaba as the first major shareholder. with a 21.75% stake.
With a rich financing history of Avantech in February 24 this year, received by the Yangtze River millet industry fund, Xingzheng Investment and other institutions of strategic investment in shares, the registered capital also grew from 363 million U.S. dollars to 375 million U.S. dollars. Among them, Xiaomi's contribution of 5,191,700 U.S. dollars, accounting for 1.38%.
It is understood that the founder and chairman of Avantage Technology, Mr. Dai Baojia, graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology with a master's degree in electrical engineering, and also has a master's degree in business administration from the University of Chicago. Before founding Avantech, he also served as chairman and CEO of RF chip company Radiotech.
It is worth mentioning that the company acquired Marvell's mobile communications unit (MBU) in 2017, becoming one of the few companies in China with all-network-communication technology.
Currently, Avantech's product line covers multi-standard communication standards including 2G/3G/4G/5G and IoT, and it has successfully developed a number of communication chips such as baseband chips for mobile communication, Wi-Fi chips, LoRa chips and multi-mode IoT wearable chips.
8, HANXIN Microelectronics
Founded in March 2017, HANXIN Microelectronics is a fast-charging protocol chip company, including digital-analog hybrid chips, power supply chips and so on. At present, the company has a number of business product lines such as LDO (low dropout regulator), voltage detection, lithium battery charging, fast charging interface identification and USB charging protocol ports, which are widely covered in the fields of toys, smart meters and fast charging.
It is understood that Hanxin Microelectronics not only reached tens of millions of strategic investment cooperation with TCL, SK Hynix in 2017, but also Qualcomm, Huawei and Spreadtrum and other companies fast charging protocol suppliers, fast charging protocol chip cumulative shipments have been nearly 100 million.
Just a week ago on March 10, the Yangtze River Xiaomi Industry Fund announced a new foreign investment, officially entered the HANXIN Microelectronics, contributed to the capital of 308,600 yuan, shareholding ratio of 9.92%, becoming the company's fourth largest shareholder.
At the same time, the registered capital of Hanxin Microelectronics also increased from the original 2,777,800 RMB to 3,121,100 RMB, an increase of 12.04%.
It is not difficult to see, millet semiconductor industry layout and Lei Jun customary "one hand ecological chain, one hand industry chain" investment path is the same, but also "eggs" in two baskets, one is self-developed chip, one is the industry chain investment.
But from the actual situation, millet's self-research core road is not smooth.
It is understood that millet in 2017 launched the Surge S1 is a 64-bit processor, using 28nm process technology and eight-core design, and contains four 2.2GHz main frequency A53 cores, four 1.4GHz main frequency A53 cores, as well as a 4-core Mali-T860 GPU.
For the millet of the Internet starting out, Surge S1 The birth of the Surge S1, although it has been very difficult, but Lei Jun will millet semiconductor research and development of the first shot in the mobile smart terminal market, then this chip compared with other competitors, in terms of performance, process and power consumption, but still weak.
With rumors that the Surge 2 chip is unable to break through the power performance bottleneck, as well as the inability of the executive team to bear the huge expenses of chip research and development and flow of film and other aspects of the millet originally powerful self-research and build the core program gradually quiet.
Although with the reorganization of Songo Electronics, Big Fish Semiconductor and Pingtou jointly launched the NB-IoT SoC chip in 2019, but the performance was mediocre, and failed to truly refresh the industry and the market Xiaomi "lack of ability to make core" label.
So, Lei Jun stumbled self-research core dream should wake up? It seems that the answer is still negative.
In the field of industry chain investment in the skilled millet, in the past two years, gradually opened up a "millet characteristics" of the semiconductor supply chain investment road, from the side to make up for their own semiconductor R & D strength is not enough short board.
According to the wisdom of things combed and found that in the past two years, millet investment in 19 semiconductor companies, its investment through the main body in addition to Lei Jun partnership created Shunwei capital, but also includes Hubei millet Yangtze River Industry Fund Partnership (referred to as the Yangtze River millet industry fund), Jiangsu ZiMi Electronic Technology Company Limited (referred to as the ZiMi technology), Tianjin Jinxing Venture Capital Co.
It is understood that the fund was established in 2017, the target size of the fund of 12 billion yuan, mainly used to support the expansion of the business of millet and millet ecological chain enterprises. However, unlike other funds that focus on investing in IoT companies, the foreign investment of this fund is mainly focused on the semiconductor field.
Wise things found that at present, the Yangtze River millet fund in the enterprise industrial and commercial information query platform public foreign investment **** 24, covering cell phones and intelligent hardware, electronic products core devices, intelligent manufacturing, industrial automation, new materials and new processes and other fields.
Among them, more than half of the fund's investment fell in the semiconductor field, *** counting 13, has become an important weapon for millet investment in the semiconductor supply chain.
At present, it seems that the "angel investor" Lei Jun's semiconductor investment dream, is storing up enough power to charge forward.
2020, not only is Lei Jun announced the launch of millet "cell phone + AIoT" double engine strategy after the second year, but also millet core dream of the third year.
At this stage, Xiaomi's semiconductor investment map has been laid out in a variety of fields such as MCU, FPGA, RF, GaN and IP, gradually realizing the whole industry chain coverage from semiconductor materials, electronic components to IC design.
But it is not difficult to find, millet core dream is turning rudder, from the initial Lei Jun aimed at the mobile terminal chip market, slowly towards the Internet of Things market development.
The most direct embodiment of this is that the hardware of Xiaomi's smartphone products is still dominated by Qualcomm chips, while its own semiconductor investment focuses on the layout of a wider range of applications in the field of AIoT.
For example, Xiaomi has invested in more than 8 semiconductor companies involved in the smart home field, including Wuxi Hao Da, Jing Chen Semiconductor, Xinyuan Microelectronics, Ankai Microelectronics, and Onray Microelectronics.
This is undoubtedly an important step for Xiaomi to fall under the wind of AIoT development set off by the market in 2018.
According to the data reported by market research organization iiMedia Research, China's AIoT hardware market scale has reached 500 billion yuan in 2018, and this figure is expected to exceed one trillion by 2020.
With the beginning of 2019, Lei Jun announced that he wanted to invest 10 billion yuan in the field of AIoT in the next five years, and Xiaomi's R & D investment costs have also risen year by year.
On February 13 this year, Xiaomi issued a voluntary announcement to disclose the latest revenue and R&D expenses. For the year ending December 31, 2019, Xiaomi's R&D expenses are expected to be about RMB 7 billion, and it plans to increase its focus on 5G + AIoT to further expand the company's advantages in IoT.
Meanwhile, for the year ending December 31, 2020, Xiaomi's R&D expenses are expected to exceed CNY10 billion, four years ahead of Lei Jun's 2019 pledge to reach CNY10 billion in R&D investment within five years. In comparison, Xiaomi invested only 3.151 billion in R&D expenses in 2017, accounting for 2.75% of total revenue.
From another point of view, millet is more inclined to go "investment win-win" core road. Simply put, millet is one of those semiconductor companies "gold master", but also their important customers.
In November 2018, Xiaomi invested in Amlogic Semiconductor, for example, the company's research and development of multimedia intelligent terminal application processor chips, including Amazon, Google, Alibaba, Baidu and Xiaomi, including companies are its customers. Among them, the sales of Amlogic Semiconductor to Xiaomi in 2018 amounted to about 262 million yuan, accounting for 11.06% of the revenue in the same period.
It is based on this strategic relationship that Xiaomi's AIoT business also took good results in fiscal year 2019.
According to Xiaomi's Q3 2019 financial report, as of September 30, 2019, the number of connected IoT devices (excluding smartphones and laptops) on Xiaomi's IoT platform reached 213.2 million units, a year-on-year increase of 62.0%.
On top of that, Xiaomi's IoT and consumer lifestyle products segment generated revenue of 15.6 billion yuan, up 44.4% year-on-year. Among them, Xiaomi's TVs ranked first in domestic shipments in the third quarter of 2019 with a market share of 16.9%, according to Aowei Yun.com.
Thus, it seems that Xiaomi is accelerating the layout of semiconductor investment, highlighting its ambitious ambitions in AIoT and the wave of core-making.
But Xiaomi's core road, ambition alone is not enough. Behind the semiconductor investment map, millet is still enduring the "lack of core" and "lack of technology" weakness of the sting. At present, it seems that millet to really stand on the industry's high point, as Lei Jun said a "great company", it still lacks a "core".
Looking back at the millet core of the court of public opinion, one side of the industry on millet self-developed chip flirting and questioning, on the one hand, the capital market on millet strategic investment in curiosity and expectations.
At this stage, millet in the semiconductor industry chain investment and the specific development of its core breakthrough is still a long and protracted battle. On the one hand, millet is still waiting for the pine cone electronic "rise again", and hope that the "rookie" big fish semiconductor can later rise to the top; on the other hand, although millet is constantly expanding the semiconductor investment map, but has not yet really shaken the head of the domestic players in the market position.
Undeniably, Xiaomi's investment in semiconductor companies will help to enrich and expand its AIoT business, but in the final analysis, these investments in Xiaomi's own chip R & D technology to support the strength of how? Can millet really bring technological innovation? We don't know yet.
Xiaomi gradually accelerated the layout of semiconductor investment, in the short term for their own "AI + AIoT" dual-engine strategy to provide the development of power, enrichment and growth of their own AIoT business. But in the long run, millet Lei Jun's core dream is still a long way to go.