The Cambrian officially knocked on the door of science and innovation.On the evening of March 26, the Shanghai stock exchange's website revealed that Cambrian's application to list on the board had been accepted, further unveiling the fledgling chip technology giant.According to the prospectus, Cambrian has gone through six rounds of financing and a pre-ipo valuation of 22.2 billion yuan.Founder Chen tianshi controls a combined 41.71% of the company's shares, with a combined direct and indirect stake of about 34.36%.
As a start-up technology company, Cambrian is currently not profitable, with a loss of about 1.179 billion yuan in 2019, which is related to the company's high investment in research and development.The reporter also noted that nearly 80 percent of the Cambrian employees were r&d personnel, and the cto had a huawei Hess background.
Pre-ipo valuation 22.2 billion
According to the prospectus, Cambrian was jointly established on February 1, 2016 by Chen tianshi and zhongke xueyuan, of which Chen tianshi contributed 630,000 yuan and zhongke xueyuan 270,000 yuan. At the beginning of its establishment, Chen tianshi held 70% of the shares.
Already a star before its IPO, Cambrian is a domestic leader in artificial intelligence chips and one of China's eight best-known AI unicorns.Its founder Chen tianshi also has extraordinary experience. He was admitted to University of Science and Technology of China youth class at the age of 16 and developed the first artificial intelligence chip at the age of 31.
Before the IPO, Cambrian was already the darling of capital, having experienced several rounds of financing, and its strategic investors included alibaba, iflytek, cas venture capital, guoxin and other heavyweight enterprises and capital parties.
Since then, Cambrian has experienced six capital increases and three equity transfers, according to the prospectus.According to the last capital increase of Cambrian on September 13, 2019, nanjing caigin invested 800 million yuan to acquire 3.61% of the shares of Cambrian before its listing. According to rough calculation, Cambrian is estimated to be worth about 22.16 billion yuan (about 3.126 billion us dollars) after six rounds of financing.
According to the prospectus, prior to the offering, Chen tianshi directly held 33.19% of the company's shares, and as an executive partner of ai xi partnership, controlled ai xi partnership holding 8.51% of the company's shares. Chen tianshi in total controlled 41.71% of the company and was the actual controller of the Cambrian.And Chen tianshi direct and indirect total holding of about 34.36%.Based on the pre-ipo valuation, Chen is worth 7.628 billion yuan.
Before the issuance and listing of Cambrian, there were 32 shareholders in Cambrian. The company affiliated to Chinese academy of sciences, aixi partnership, Cambrian employee shareholding platform, Paleozoic venture capital and state investment fund were listed as the second to fifth largest shareholders in Cambrian, with the shareholding ratio of 18.24%, 8.51%, 3.93% and 3.92%, respectively.In addition, ali venture capital holding 1.94%, iflytek holding 1.19%.
The cto is from huawei
IC design enterprises have a high degree of dependence on r & d personnel.As a technology enterprise still in the start-up stage, Cambrian research situation is also very concerned.From the prospectus, the company has also been very important research investment.
The proportion of researchers in the Cambrian period was extremely high.According to the prospectus, as of December 31, 2019, the company had 680 r&d personnel, accounting for 79.25% of the total number of employees.There are 546 employees with master's degree or above, accounting for 63.64% of the total number of employees.
Cambrian said, high-quality r & d team is an important part of the company's core competitiveness, but also the company's survival and development of the foundation and key.
In addition, the reporter also noted that liang jun, the chief technology officer of Cambrian, came from huawei and once worked for huawei haisi semiconductor company.
The Cambrian period also maintained a high investment in research and development.In the three years from 2017 to 2019, the company's r&d expenses were 29.8619 million yuan, 240.11,800 yuan and 54.0454 million yuan, respectively. The r&d expenses were 380.73%, 205.18% and 122.32%, respectively.
However, the Cambrian prospectus also suggests a concentration of risk for both customers and suppliers.In 2017, 2018 and 2019, the sales amount of the top five Cambrian customers accounted for 100.00%, 99.95% and 95.44% of the operating income respectively.In addition, from 2017 to 2019, the total purchase amount of the first five direct suppliers of Cambrian was 14.228,800 yuan, 203.154,900 yuan and 362,711,700 yuan respectively, accounting for 92.64%, 82.53% and 66.49% of the total purchase amount in the same period.The two data have a high proportion.
Develop three types of chips
In the continuous force, Cambrian also achieved good results.According to the prospectus, as of February 29, 2020, 65 domestic and foreign patents (including 50 domestic patents and 15 foreign patents) had been authorized in Cambrian, 120 PCT patents had been applied, and a total of 1,474 domestic and foreign patents were being applied.
At present, Cambrian has developed three types of chips for cloud, edge and end scenarios, namely terminal intelligent processor IP, cloud intelligent chip and acceleration card, edge intelligent chip and acceleration card, and developed a unified basic system software platform for all products of the three product lines.
Cambrian said that the company quickly achieved the industrialization of technology output, has launched Cambrian 1A, Cambrian 1H, Cambrian 1M series of chips for the terminal scenario, based on siyuan 100 and siyuan 270 chip cloud intelligent acceleration card series products, and based on siyuan 220 chip edge intelligent acceleration card.
Among them, the Cambrian 1A and Cambrian 1H are respectively applied in the flagship smartphone chip of a world-renowned Chinese technology company and have been integrated into more than 100 million smart phones and other intelligent terminal devices.Siyuan series products have also been used in the tide, lenovo and other server manufacturers of products, siyuan 270 chip won the sixth world Internet conference leading technology achievement award.Among the ai chip design start-ups, the company is one of the few that has achieved successful product streaming and scale application.Through continuous technical innovation and design optimization, the company has realized many iterations of product updates, and the continuous upgrading of product performance has promoted the company's core competitiveness.