About 20 million. Subsequently, Ark Technology developed the “Ark One” chip in April 2001. Under the auspices of the Deputy Mayor of Beijing, relevant persons from the national ministries and commissions and the Academy of Engineering attended the grand Ark launch conference.

The expectations of the official Fang Zhou exceed the historical responsibility that a private company can bear.

Beijing bought tens of thousands of NC machines, and the State Council helped to promote NC machines in the west. According to the IT Times Weekly survey report, Ark One ’s brilliant performance gave Li Delei full confidence. For many small and medium customers introduced by Ni Guangnan, Li Delei ignored them.

Funds are pouring in like a tide. In Beijing, Zhongguancun Software Park invested 50 million, and in the state, the 863 Program invested tens of millions.

But soon, two constraints pushed Ark to the brink of bankruptcy. In the units that focus on promoting NC machines, people find it difficult to use NC machines, and the constraints of the desktop application ecosystem are very obvious. At the same time, the Wintel Alliance has also formed on the server side, and it is difficult to make breakthroughs at one end. For the NC machine with such a poor user experience, some non-critical units can still tolerate it, but the Public Security Bureau cannot. Beijing Public Security specifically asked Tsinghua experts to make an assessment: NC cannot be used.

The market changes are unexpected. Liang Ning, who had participated in the Ark project, later recalled that what they wanted to break was a huge ecological alliance, which was difficult for 100 companies to do. With the chip and the operating system, but in the end, there are thousands of applications that need to be used smoothly, tens of millions, which is far from enough.

In 2004, Ark Technology was almost bankrupt. Li Delei decided to change course, and quit chip research and development.

Ark Technology became a client, and Li Delei began to publicize his Ark chip “Shit Theory” in Zhongguancun. On the one hand, Li Delei, a long-sleeve dancer, cooperated with Fly Cable Semiconductor of the United States to help him develop the market in China. On the other hand, Li Delei built a building in Zhongguancun by virtue of policy advantages.

This caused dissatisfaction between Ni Guangnan and Liu Qiang. Ni Guangnan believes that Li Delei took the country’s money and did not go to research and develop chips, but opted for speculation. He also thought that his salary was low. Liu Qiang couldn’t see the way out of the chip business, and the shares were unoccupied. Therefore, he asked Li Delei to exchange his original promise with his shares for Ark chip technology, but was rejected.

As a businessman, Li Delei has his own hardships. He believes that the research funding of 15 million for the “Ark III” cannot pay more than 2.3 million to the research and development personnel. Counting only 2,000 yuan a month for one person, it can’t keep people.

The Ark plan carrying the mission against Wintel has been stranded. Ni Guangnan, who wanted to achieve his ideal, and Li Delei, who wanted to make money, failed to achieve their goals. In the end, Liu Qiang succeeded in the listed company of Beijing Junzheng with the embedded CPU technology trained in the Ark.

Folk clown

Coming to a new independent innovation cycle, small and medium-sized companies have become the protagonists of public events. The cycle of events has become shorter, and the protagonists have become more isolated and helpless, lacking conspirators.

In August 2018, the red-core browser, known as the domestic “self-developed” browser kernel, took only one day to be completely skinned. Someone downloaded this browser full of national conditions, and found that the red core actually encapsulated a chrome two years ago.

Originally celebrating the completion of a new round of financing, Spring Wind is proud of horseshoe disease, and technical public relations did not hold back for a moment. Now, a public relations disaster has plunged the private enterprise into turmoil.

More negatives about this company have been picked up: beauty executives have injected water, and the CEO has won the “boldest prize in history.” Taken together, this company seems to be the “Hanxin second”.

In the face of menacing words, Red Core CEO Chen Benfeng looked trembling. In an interview with the media, he said that the new round of financing propaganda strategy was wrong. But in “safe and controllable”, the red core is innovative. This IT entrepreneur cherishes the company he founded, and regards the possible death of Red Core as a loss in China.

The most embarrassing place is that customers have denied using red core products. When the layer of independent innovation is pierced, everyone is afraid of getting into a show. However, Chen Benfeng has a lot of customers for his list of customers, and he does not spare: (central enterprise customers) they must be in use, either the headquarters or the branch below.

So why do big companies use red core browsers? People in the industry pointed out that Red Core’s products can easily monitor the Internet browsing behavior of employees during office hours. This is of course a boon for many companies that don’t trust employees. So the purchase of red core has also become a demand.

In other words, the market prospect of Red Core has nothing to do with independent innovation.

After the storm, the red core was renamed Yunshen Interconnect. Changing the vest, it was still unharmed.

Liu Lei is more miserable than Chen Benfeng. In the middle of January 2020, Liu Lei of the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences promoted his own “Magnolia” language. Originally, a custom development based on python was blown into completely independent innovation. For the general public, programming languages ​​are farther away than browsers, but it took less than a few days for programmers to see through Liu Lei’s lies.

Liu Lei ’s position is different from that of private enterprises. After the outbreak of the “Magnolia” language incident, Liu Lei was demoted to another level, and he was not allowed to apply for a scientific research project for three years, and he was not allowed to be promoted for five years.

A sigh

The banner of independent innovation has never been easy to carry.

For China’s science and technology industry, independent innovation is the road and dream of a new era, and sometimes it may be an inevitable choice. However, most of the time, independent innovation is expensive.