Produced | Tiger Sniff Technology Group

Author | Zhang Xue

Cover | IC photo


Entering 2020, technology companies have obviously accelerated the pace of IPOs, especially after the relaxation of the listing conditions of the Science and Technology Board, many startups are eager to try or accelerate.

The Cambrian is such an existence.

After accepting inquiries from the Shanghai Stock Exchange on April 10, on May 7, Zhongke Cambrian Technology Co., Ltd. (referred to as “Cambrian” for short) disclosed information related to the first-round review inquiry Reply.

Faced with the sharp test of the 20 questions in 6 categories, the Cambrian removed the aura of the star AI company and became an ordinary start-up company that wanted to be listed urgently and was extremely helpless. .

From the disclosed response, the problems of the Shanghai Stock Exchange involve the company ’s equity structure, main business, core technology, R & D projects, operating income, fundraising projects, accounts receivable, etc. Focus.

When the Cambrian submitted its prospectus to the Science and Technology Board more than a month ago, Tiger Sniff had analyzed the current Cambrian, but it was not until the report was released that a relatively real Cambrian had just surfaced. .

In the reply report, Cambrian did not shy away from talking about the current lack of money, the worries after losing Huawei ’s major customers, and obtaining government subsidies.

Before the market, the Cambrian has faded aura

Once the Cambrian was brilliant, no one was optimistic about its future with the support of Huawei ’s super big order and the technical background of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

But sometimes such auras are not always positive. When Huawei chose to use self-developed chips, when the Cambrian won the government order, the ensuing doubts were also proportional to the aura.

However, in the response report, we can clearly see, The Cambrian is secretly emphasizing that there is no dependence on two-not relying on Huawei or the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

In terms of core technical staff, the opening report of the reply mentioned two “Mr. Keys”-Chen Yunji and Liang Jun .

As one of the “Gemini” of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chen Yunji served as a director of the Cambrian and a “chief scientist”. During the part-time work of the Cambrian, he participated in part of the company’s research and development. He worked as a researcher and doctoral tutor at the Institute of Computing, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The Cambrian pointed out that Chen Yunji did not directly participate in the specific work of product technology research and development during his tenure. After leaving, he did not provide product technology guidance to the Cambrian.

In other words, Chen Yunji did not play an important role in the formation of the Cambrian core technology and main products, which also cleared out some of the relationship between the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Cambrian.


On the other hand, according to the prospectus, the largest customer of the Cambrian in 2019 was the Intelligent Computing Platform (Phase II) project of the Commerce Bureau of the Hengqin New District Management Committee of Zhuhai City. The total price of this project was as high as 440 million. The Cambrian brought about 200 million revenues.

When asked whether they depended on the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other relevant units to obtain the Intelligent Computing Platform (Phase II) project, the Cambrian stated:

The Hengqin Advanced Intelligent Computing Platform (Phase I) project is funded by the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the equipment property rights are owned by the Chinese Academy of Sciences; the Hengqin Intelligent Computing Platform (Phase II) project is funded by the Hengqin New District and the equipment property rights are In Hengqin New District, the construction units of the two projects are different. Purchasing company products and services in Hengqin New District is a commercial activity.

Another Liang Jun is the current deputy general manager and chief technology officer of Cambrian. He joined Cambrian in 2017. Before that, he worked for Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., Shenzhen HiSilicon Co., Ltd.

In the first year of its joining, Huawei began to cooperate with the Cambrian. Whether from a technical perspective or a related perspective, Liang Jun ’s identity is likely to attract attention.

In the reply report, the Cambrian focused on the technical relationship between Liang Jun and Huawei:

Liang JunThe work content of Huawei HiSilicon and the Cambrian work belong to different segments of chip design. During his tenure at Huawei HiSilicon, he was mainly engaged in the development of network chips , mobile phones SoC chip design work, and engaged in artificial intelligence chip research and development in the Cambrian. ”

In terms of main business revenue, in the previously disclosed prospectus, from 2017 to 2018, the Cambrian reliance on Huawei was obvious.

In terms of data, thanks to IP authorization for Huawei’s mobile phones, Cambrian accounted for RMB 7,843,300 and RMB 11,702,500, accounting for 98.95% and 99.69% of the main business revenue, respectively.

However, in 2019, Huawei has not reached a new cooperation with the Cambrian. In the future, the Cambrian expects that Huawei will continue to purchase large amounts of company products.

As a result, the Cambrian has lost its qualification to rely on Huawei.

However, whether the Cambrian, which has lost its star aura and background blessings, can be bought by the market, it is relatively difficult to predict.

The original intention of listing: lack of money, lack of the second “Huawei”

Perhaps it is because the Cambrian is going to “Huawei” and “Chinese Academy of Sciences”, so it also leads to the current embarrassment of the Cambrian.

On the one hand, the loss of Huawei, a big customer, had a great negative impact on the Cambrian.

Although according to the latest disclosed report, during the reporting period, the amount of government subsidies included in the Cambrian Period ’s current income was 8.236 million yuan, 69.141 million yuan, and 33.641 million yuan. Among them, the relevant units in the Beijing area provide more subsidies. But the fact that the Cambrian was short of money could not be covered up.

On the other hand, the Cambrian is comprehensively advancing the integration of “cloud side”, which requires a lot of investment.

An industry observer said to Hu Sniff: “The Cambrian chose to go public at this time, it was really short of money.”

It is worth noting that in this response report, the income of Cambrian sales staff was also taken out. From the data point of view, the average salary of sales in 2019 is 62.770,000, a year-on-year increase of 49.2%. Similarly, the number of people has also increased by 60% from the previous year. To a certain extent, the Cambrian heavy sales are also a sign of lack of money.

This point is also confirmed in the reply report:

The company expects that there will be other 5-6 chip products that require R & D investment in the next 3 years. Referring to the R & D investment of the fundraising project, the R & D investment of a single smart chip and system is about 600 million yuan. In addition to the chip research and development itself, the company will further strengthen the construction of IC components, chips, and hardware-related public component technologies and modules. In the next three years, it plans to invest 300-400 million yuan. For platform construction, the next three years plan to invest 300-400 million yuan.

Undoubtedly, in order to ensure the normal development of the follow-up business, the Cambrian will still be a stage of continuous “burning money” in the next three years, with at least 3.6-4.4 billion yuan invested.

From this point of view, there are only two paths ahead of the Cambrian. Either find a customer whose procurement scale is sufficient to replace Huawei, or abandon the part of the layout on the “cloud side”.

As for the first way, the Cambrian has made it clear in the response report that it is difficult to expand a customer who can replace Huawei in terms of procurement scale in the short term.

The vast majority of other well-known domestic smartphone manufacturers such as Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo and other products use mature mobile phone chip products and solutions of overseas integrated circuit design companies such as Qualcomm and MediaTek, and the large-scale commercial use of their independently developed SoC chips is still waiting. In the short term, there is no large-scale purchase demand for the company’s smart processor IP products.

On the second path, the industry ’s views are still quite controversial.

In the view of some people, the Cambrian has some disadvantages of unclear positioningAt the end, if it can focus on a subdivided field, it is still advantageous in terms of commercialization.

But from the Cambrian itself, it may be due to the consideration of each “cake”, or it may have set the direction of the integrated layout at the beginning of its establishment.

In short, these two roads failed to become the Cambrian choice, but unexpectedly embarked on the IPO road.

After all, the risk of going public is a bit insignificant compared to the current status quo.

About the future: customers become opponents, and revenue capacity is doubtful

In the final analysis, after the Cambrian came into the market, its revenue capability and prospects are the core points of market concern, and this part has become the focus of this Shanghai Stock Exchange’s inquiries.

In fact, in the prospectus, some of the Cambrian revenue issues have been clearly stated, and even a few subdivisions have been written in the subdivision risk, such as continuous losses, short-term unprofitable, IP Unsustainable business development and high customer concentration. Among them, continuous losses and short-term unprofitability can be said to be a common phenomenon in the chip industry.

High customer concentration is a Cambrian personality problem.

After the submission of the prospectus by Cambrian, some media accounted for more than 95% of the total revenue of the top five customers during the reporting period, of which sales to a single major customer accounted for more than 95% from 2017 to 2018. Sustainability is questionable.

In response, the Cambrian responded that in 2019, the Cambrian expanded its cloud business and corresponding customers, and the company ’s largest customer accounted for a decline in sales, achieving customer diversification. At the end of the reporting period, there was no single customer The sales ratio exceeds the company’s total sales by 50%.

It should be pointed out that, according to the response report, Company B is Zhongke Shuguang, and it has a certain cooperation with the Commercial Bureau of the Hengqin District Management Committee of Zhuhai City.As a relationship, the combined share of the two accounts for 61.03% of Cambrian operating income.

For the reasons and rationality of the Cambrian sales of acceleration cards to Zhongke Shuguang, sponsors and reporting accountants believe that the company ’s sales of acceleration cards to Zhongke Shuguang are mainly Hengqin advanced intelligent computing platforms (Phase 1) The project is specifically managed by Zhongke Shuguang. The company has led the design of the intelligent computing cluster technology route. The project uses smart chips and accelerator cards developed by the company.

That is to say, in 2019, the Cambrian achieved more than 61% of revenue in the Hengqin Advanced Intelligent Computing Platform (Phase 1) and (Phase 2) projects.

Overall, enriching customers and weakening the proportion of large customers’ revenue is the first threshold that the Cambrian needs to cross in a short period of time.

In terms of main business, the Cambrian is mainly divided into four parts: terminal intelligent processor IP, cloud smart chip and accelerator card, edge smart chip and accelerator card, and intelligent computing integrated system.

Specifically, The main revenue source for 2017 and 2018 is IP authorization. In 2019, cloud smart chip and accelerator card products are gradually introduced to the market for commercial landing , and the adaptation to terminals such as Lenovo, Inspur, Xinhua III, and Dawning has been completed. The next product, Siyuan 290, is already in the internal testing stage and is mainly for artificial intelligence cloud training tasks. It is expected to achieve large-scale revenue by 2021. The edge smart chips and accelerator cards are expected to form large-scale sales this year.

It can be seen that the Cambrian has a complete smart chip product line from the terminal, the edge to the cloud. It believes that at present, companies in the industry that can achieve a complete smart chip product line from terminals, edge to cloud include Nvidia and Huawei Hisilicon.

Commercial is so dramatic. Who can think of Huawei, which was relied on two years ago, to turn around and see you again as the biggest competition in the Cambrian? Compared with these two chip giants, Cambrian thinks he has advantages and disadvantages.

Compared with Nvidia, the Cambrian competitive advantage is mainly reflected in:

The chip architecture is optimized for artificial intelligence applications and various algorithms, which improves the performance and power consumption ratio and performance price ratio of the product; the product can be optimized for the ecology and needs of domestic customers, and provide customers with Quick response and flexible technical support services.

Compared with Hisilicon, the advantages of the Cambrian are mainly reflected in:

Entering the field of artificial intelligence chips early, with first-mover advantages, accumulating a batch of core technologies and patents, and technological innovation capabilities have been recognized by the industry; positioned as independent, neutral chip companies, and not developing artificial intelligence application solutions Business, to avoid competition with its own customers.

Compared with the aforementioned companies, the main competitive disadvantages of the Cambrian are:

  • There is still a large gap between the financial strength and R & D investment of international giants;

  • There is still a certain gap between the completeness of the software ecosystem and Nvidia;

  • Nvidia and Huawei HiSilicon both have mature and complete sales networks, and the customer’s awareness of the product and market awareness are superior to the Cambrian.

    It can be seen that it is still difficult for the Cambrian to break the market in the field of AI chips quickly, and occupy a market. As for when the Cambrian will be profitable, it may be three years or 13 years.

    The current uncertainty of revenue, the continuous loss, and the eagerness to go public have also made many people sigh, and the former self-illuminating AI star Cambrian has also become a thousand ordinary. One of the AI ​​companies.