Original link: https://www.latepost.com/news/dj_detail?id=1724
The person in charge of ByteDance server chips established a RISC-V data center CPU company with a pre-investment valuation of over US$100 million
“LatePost” exclusively learned that Lu Shan, the former head of Bytedance’s RISC-V and server chip project, has left his job to start a business , and established Bluecore Computing Power, with the direction of RISC-V data center CPU (central processing unit), Blue Core Computing Power The first round of financing is in progress, with a pre-money valuation of more than $100 million.
Shan Lu graduated from Tsinghua University and holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Boston University. Before entering ByteDance’s San Diego US office in 2019, he worked in Intel and Qualcomm successively, and has more than ten years of experience in the industry. After the establishment of the blue core computing power, Lu Shan has returned to China.
RISC-V is an instruction set, which is a language that machines can understand, and specifies the design specifications for chips and software. At present, the mainstream instruction sets in the world are x86 and ARM. CPUs based on x86 are mainly used in personal computers and servers in data centers, and CPUs based on ARM are mainly used in mobile terminals, such as mobile phones.
RISC-V, like ARM, is also a reduced instruction set. It has lower performance and was mainly used in embedded chips such as MCU (micro control unit) in the past. MCU serves the Internet of Things market and can be used as the main control chip for smart door locks, cameras and other devices.
The new technology trend is that both ARM and RISC-V are developing towards higher-performance markets. ARM CPUs have entered data center servers, and Apple has also developed its own ARM-based personal computer processor M series; some teams have also begun to try based on RISC-V designs higher-performance CPUs and uses them on mobile phones and data center servers. For example, Jim Keller, a well-known chip engineer who participated in Apple A-series and AMD Zen architecture design, has devoted himself to RISC-V general-purpose CPU entrepreneurship. BlueCore Computing also chose this direction, hoping to design data center server CPUs based on RISC-V.
“LatePost” once reported that in 2022, there will be a wave of ARM-based CPU entrepreneurship. Prior to this, Ali Pingtouge launched a domestic ARM architecture server CPU, and some technical talents of Pingtouge have since left to start businesses.
The ARM architecture is developed by the British company Arm and holds IP (intellectual property rights). RISC-V is an open source and free instruction set that can be freely used for commercial purposes. Anyone can design, manufacture and sell based on RISC-V Chips are not restricted by a single country or company, and there is no need to pay IP licensing fees.
In 2019, the RISC-V Foundation moved its registered headquarters from the United States to Switzerland, a neutral country, to ensure that universities, governments and companies around the world can continue to contribute to the RISC-V open source community without geopolitical concerns.
The open source RISC-V has attracted much attention in the Chinese semiconductor industry seeking more autonomy. In 2018, the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences led the establishment of the China Open Instruction Ecology (RISC-V) Alliance. According to the RISC-V Foundation, by the end of 2022, the global shipment of RISC-V chips has reached 10 billion, of which about 50% are designed by Chinese companies.
Some chip investors believe that RISC-V is still more suitable for IoT chips at this stage. “To do a good job in large computing power chips, the core is not whether the architecture is open source or not, but the ecology. It is difficult for a new architecture to become competitive in the short term.” The investor said. In an interview with EE Times in June this year, Jim Keller said: “If you go to open source, you can’t go back to the old rules and regulations. I think RSIC-V is the architecture that will win in the future.” (Text | Edited by Zhang Jiahao | Cheng Manqi )
The management of Caocao Travel has collectively delegated to the front line of business, and plans to achieve national profitability in August
“LatePost” exclusively learned that Cao Cao Travel has recently undergone a new round of organizational adjustments. The company’s CEO Gong Xin is directly in charge of the online car-hailing business, and CFO Zhao Ke has adjusted to the car service business; the person in charge of autonomous driving and the person in charge of business analysis have all gone to the region Manage the online car-hailing business directly. All changes are aimed at accomplishing one goal – to achieve national profitability by August this year.
In July 2021, Didi briefly left the online car-hailing market, which gave AutoNavi, T3 Travel, Caocao Travel and other platforms the hope of overtaking. However, 18 months later, Didi resumed its listing. Except for AutoNavi, which has won 30% of the market share, few players in the market have realized their established wishes.
Cao Cao’s trip is a typical example. Founded in 2015, the online car-hailing platform is backed by its parent company, Geely Holding Group, and has been operating stably for many years. In 2021, they received 3.8 billion yuan in Series B financing after Didi delisted, trying to start expansion. However, only half a year later, the team realized that the market structure was difficult to shake, and finally readjusted its strategy in 2022, shifting its focus to reducing losses and pursuing profitability.
After more than a year of hard work, Caocao Chuxing has become one of the few online car-hailing platforms that can correct gross profit (without deducting headquarters amortization) except for Didi and AutoNavi. “LatePost” learned that Cao Cao’s travel orders are currently stable at more than 1.4 million orders, ranking fifth in the industry, ranking behind Didi, AutoNavi, Huaxiaozhu, and T3 Travel.
Today’s online car-hailing market can be roughly divided into three echelons according to the scale: the first echelon headed by Didi and AutoNavi, who have mastered the resources of drivers and passengers or the right to distribute traffic; The second echelon, dominated by Ruqi, is mostly independent brands backed by car manufacturers; the third echelon is hundreds of small online car-hailing service providers that have grown up across the country in the past two years, and most of them serve Gothic Polymer or Flower Piglet.
For the second and third echelons of online car-hailing companies, it is not an easy task to turn positive gross profit or overall profit. Didi, which has the highest order volume and the strongest scale effect, has achieved a net profit margin of 3.1% in 2020, which is also the highest profit level in the industry so far. But looking at other platforms, their market share is relatively low, and their brands are weak. At present, they still need to provide subsidies to drivers and users at the same time to make the business run positively. In addition, they have to pay more costs to buy traffic, such as paying a 9% traffic service fee to AutoNavi, which further compresses the already meager profits.
Cao Cao Travel is now close to profitability, which is directly related to the strategic adjustments it has made in the past year or so. On the one hand, he greatly reduced the subsidies for drivers and passengers; on the other hand, he tried to connect as many platforms as possible to reduce traffic costs. It is understood that Cao Cao is currently connected to multiple platforms including Didi, Huaxiaozhu, AutoNavi, Meituan, and Tencent Travel, and its external orders account for about 70%. At the beginning of this year, after Meituan Taxi gave up its self-operated operation, Caocao Travel attracted a large number of Meituan drivers, and the order increased by more than 200,000.
In the past two years, the online car-hailing market has approached saturation, drivers are increasing, passengers are decreasing, competition has become more intense, and the market where scale was king and allowed to exchange losses for growth has long gone return.
“LatePost” learned that since this year, many online car-hailing companies, including Caocao Travel and T3 Travel, are planning to seek new financing or go public. Before the market environment becomes more severe, they need to reserve more survival resources, and at the same time prove to the market that this is a company that can make money and bring returns to shareholders. (Text｜Editor Shen Fangwei｜Gao Honghao)
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