Jianan Technology, a high-performance computing chip company, officially listed on Nasdaq with the “CAN” as the transaction code on the evening of November 21, Beijing time. The issue price was 9 US dollars per share, and the fundraising amount reached 90 million US dollars.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “IPO knows early” (ID: ipozaozhidao), author C. Authorized to reprint.
This listing means that Jianan has become the first IPO of China’s independent intellectual property artificial intelligence chip companies to the US, and is also the first block of the global blockchain.
The prospectus shows that the prospectus shows that Jianan’s total revenue in 2018 was RMB 2,705.3 million, an increase of 106.8% from RMB 1,388.1 million in 2017. As of the first nine months of this year, Jianan’s total revenue was 950 million. Among them, the company’s third quarter total revenue increased more than doubled in the first half of this year.
Jiahan said that the funds raised will be used for the following five aspects: 1. Strengthen the company’s leading position in supercomputing solutions and enhance the competitiveness of blockchain and AI products; Continue to invest in energy-efficient chip design; 3. Continue to launch new AI products; 4. Launch AI Saas platform; 5. Continue to expand overseas business.
The gorgeous turn from the mining giant to the AI chip
The prospectus shows that Jia Nan Chairman and CEO Zhang Nanxuan and his team invented and delivered the first cryptocurrency mining machines using ASIC technology as early as January 2013, which was followed by the company’s further development of AI chips. Research and development have laid a solid foundation.
Public information shows that in 2011, Zhang Nanyu, who was still reading at Beihang University, first contacted Bitcoin. After a night of research, he thought that 1% of Bitcoin could change the world and designed two FPGA miners. And in January 2013 made the world’s first ASIC mining machine, leading the industry into the ASIC era.
After 7 years, Jia Nan has already become one of the largest mining machine manufacturers in the world. According to the data of Frost & Sullivan, according to the data of Frost & Sullivan, as of June 30, 2019, Jia Nan is the second largest manufacturer of Bitcoin mining machines in the world. In the same period, the bitcoin mining machine sold by Jianan accounted for all the bitcoin mining machines sold worldwide.The total power is 21.9%.
Jia Nan emphasized in the prospectus that the company has been focusing on technology development, design and research, and is committed to the long-term development of the blockchain and AI industries.
In 2016, Jia Nan broke through 16nm in the chip process, and was also the top ten domestically produced 16nm chip company. This also promoted Zhang Nanxuan and his team to start the development of the edge side AI chip.
In September 2018, Jia Nan launched the first generation of AI chip Kanzhi K210, becoming the first company in the industry to provide commercial edge AI chips based on RISC-V architecture and mass production, and gradually applied to intelligent buildings. Different fields such as smart home, smart energy consumption and intelligent agroforestry.
In Zhang Nanxuan’s view, whether it is a blockchain or an AI chip, the entire entrepreneurial process has always focused on doing things related to computing. “One has improved the efficiency of social operations, and one has changed the life scene of people. The final The goal is to improve people’s lives through intelligent computing.”
Building the Jianan Ecological Circle with Core Technology Capabilities
At present, Jianan has more than 300 employees, with an average age of 32. Among them, the R&D team consists of 127 people, and more than 65% of them have more than 7 years of experience. Jia Nan also emphasized in the prospectus that the company’s core R&D team worked with the founding team for more than four years.
The high-tech capabilities and stability of the founding team and the R&D team have also brought considerable development results. As of September 30, 2019, Jia Nan registered 69 patents in China, including 6 inventions, 50 utility model patents and 13 design patents. In the same period, Jia Nan has registered 81 software copyrights and 30 IC layout designs in China.
In addition, Jianan has established a high-performance computing department and an artificial intelligence business group to develop a foundation for technology research and development and innovation business with the “AI+ high-performance computing” two-wheel drive operation mode.
Jia Nan mentioned in the prospectus that he has mastered the entire IC design process and has large-scale chip mass production experience. He has completed 7 kinds of splicing for 28nm, 16nm and 7nm ASICs with a success rate of 100. %. In 2017, a total of more than 150 million ASICs were produced in 2018 and six months ended September 30, 2019.
Since the beginning of 2015, Jia Nan has established a partnership with TSMC, a world-renowned IC manufacturer, and was selected by TSMC as one of the first partners of 7nm ASIC. The company also works with ASE, STATSChipPac and SPIL, one of the world’s largest providers of IC packaging and test services, providing IC packaging and testing services.
In September 2018, Jia Nan became the industry’s first delivery based on RISC-V architecture and self-developed neural network accelerator for commercial edge smart chip companies. The company’s first generation of artificial intelligence chip, the KIT K210, has two functions: machine vision and machine hearing. It can seamlessly integrate different algorithms to handle various application scenarios, including smart home, smart energy consumption, smart retail and smart driving. It is widely regarded as a milestone in the development of hardware in the field of artificial intelligence edge computing.
Public information shows that Jianan has reached cooperation with upstream and downstream enterprises in Baidu and Softcom Smart. As an important member of Baidu AI hardware ecology, Jia Nan provides Baidu’s customized development module PaddlePi-K210 based on Kanji K210, and opens the PaddlePaddle model device-side deployment solution. Specifically, developers do not need hardware changes. The public version of the mold can always be in the sample stage.
In the cooperation with iSoftStone, the non-inductive access control system developed by Jianan has been deployed to the iSoftStone headquarters building, which can identify and identify 2,000 daily monitoring points per 20,000 people in the building. Test.
In addition to the above cooperation cases, Jianan’s first generation of artificial intelligence chip “Gengzhi K210” has also covered intelligent buildings, smart homes, smart energy consumption and intelligent agroforestry, and is the world’s largest cloud computing vendor. Amazon AWS collaborates to build a network that meets the needs of the cloud in a matter of minutes, making the company more focused on the business itself, which makes Jianan the first enterprise in China to realize the cloud on the IC.
Policy helps blockchain and artificial intelligence
It is worth noting that the relevant departments have issued a series of policies on blockchain and artificial intelligence, hoping to use the blockchain as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies, and accelerate the development of blockchain technology and industrial innovation. .
In addition, the “Guiding Opinions on Accelerating the Cultivation of a New Mode of Shared Manufacturing and Promoting the High-Quality Development of Manufacturing Industry” issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on October 29 also proposed to promote the construction of new infrastructure. Strengthen the construction of new infrastructure such as 5G, artificial intelligence, industrial Internet, and Internet of Things, expand the coverage of high-speed, large-capacity, and low-latency networks, and encourage manufacturing enterprises to realize the interconnection of people, machines, and objects through internal network transformation and upgrade. Provide information network support.
It can be said that blockchain and artificial intelligence have the potential to affect every industry in the economy, and computing power is a key bottleneck in blockchain and artificial intelligence performance.
Therefore, for Jianan, whether it can achieve more breakthroughs in ASIC performance will also help it further realize the integration and innovation of blockchain and AI.
For the future plan, Zhang Nanzhen believes that 2019 is a key node of Jianan, not only because Jianan successfully completed the listing, but also because the gradual popularization of 5G will directly lead to large connections, low latency and low power. Explosion of the application scenario. “Jia Nan as a focusCompanies in the edge-side AI market are more likely to be able to provide computing power to more enterprise customers through smart chips that enable devices to have local computing power.
In Zhang Nanxuan’s vision, the reason for choosing the edge-side AI chip is based on two opportunities:
From a technical point of view, AI has revolutionized the traditional computing architecture. Nowadays, popular GPUs and FPGAs are not completely designed for AI. At present, the specialization of AI chips has become a trend, which is the opportunity of Jia Nan, and it is also an important reason for Jia Nan to develop ASIC computing equipment from the beginning.
Secondly, from the perspective of the market, the development of 5G will promote the application scenarios of more equipment interconnection, and promote the development of the edge-side market in the future. The edge-side AI market is still a blue ocean, and many products are not mature, which creates a huge space for development.
In short, with more capital injection, rapid development of 5G technology, increased application scenarios, and government policy support, the AI field has become the most watched and fastest growing vertical industry in recent years. Naturally, it also breeds huge market potential and opportunities.
Zhang Nanxuan said that after Jianan successfully landed on Nasdaq this time, he hoped to use the ever-improving super-power as the productivity of the company, provide customers with AI competitiveness, and help customers realize their self-worth in the intelligent world. “No matter which company, its ultimate goal is to create value and provide good service for users.” Zhang Nanxuan said.