The Millennium Semiconductor Survival Guide

Baidu's exit is an accidental coincidence and an inevitable outcome of the times.

The large-scale companies founded by Chinese in Silicon Valley will eventually either decline or be taken over by other ethnic groups in various forms.

So that twenty years later, the Chinese, who were obviously more than a step ahead in terms of work ability, were beaten by the Asans in the Silicon Valley workplace.

Maybe the Chinese bloggers on Twitter will tell you various reasons why Asan’s upper castes are no less outstanding than Chinese. Asans are naturally better at socializing and managing, while Chinese are all nerds.

These are some of the reasons, but they are not the fundamental reason. The fundamental reason is that the Chinese have a strong motherland behind them. The existence of the motherland naturally makes them face a thick ceiling when entering management.

Not to mention Internet companies like Baidu that have huge public opinion tools. Even if Robin is not taken away this time, he will be taken away next time.

It is nothing more than whether the way of walking is decent.

Later Zhou Xin had a particularly profound understanding of this when he was the representative of the rejuvenating franchise in Washington.

Because of his work, he has come into contact with all kinds of Chinese and the upper class in Washington. He can understand that the rise of China has affected the life trajectories of countless people.

As someone who has lived both abroad and at home, Zhou Xin also dislikes and disagrees with many social phenomena in China.

However, China’s history is too long, its cultural traditions are too strong, its national consensus and the national image it has constructed externally determine that as long as China exists, all Chinese will be on the same boat.

Well, at least the Chinese from mainland China are all on the same ship, and this ship determines the upper and lower limits of each individual's development.

With this understanding, Zhou Xin returned to this era. He believed that it was his historical mission to help China break through the Iron Curtain of chips. Even if there was no system to give him a task, he set such a goal for himself.

Of course, without Zhou Xin, China would have been able to achieve a breakthrough in semiconductor technology, but it would have been much slower.

The slow time will further cause China to lag behind in the AI ​​competition. Each step is slow, and the technological gap between China and Amerikan may further widen.

AI will be the key to determining future technological strength.

As for the three major elements of AI, data, computing power and algorithms, only China and Americen have them at the same time. Now American wants to remove the computing power.

"Boss, there are too many well-known large companies on the market now on the verge of bankruptcy, or have already gone bankrupt. This is an unprecedented opportunity for emerging investments with huge amounts of cash."

Warren Johnson is already impressed by his boss's admiration.

Observing from the macroeconomics or the details around us, many people can smell the financial crisis coming, or realize that the current economic environment is abnormal and we may be facing a crisis.

But there are very few individuals who accurately realize the time point and take action.

Not to mention an investment institution with a scale of hundreds of billions of dollars like Xinxing, it would be even more difficult to escape from the top before the financial crisis hits.

Because this body is no longer Xiami, Xiami’s movement group will not react violently.

This is like a school of fish migrating to their birthplace. The little shrimp feels that there is a dead end ahead and cannot go any further, so he quickly turns around. Other fish will not care.

Just like Paulson, this is another Paulson, John Paulson. It is unclear whether he has any relationship with Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, at least they have no relationship on the surface.

John Paulson was just a nobody at this time. Not many people knew John Paulson before 2007. His company, Paulson \u0026 Co., had 60 employees and managed a $1 billion hedge fund.

One billion US dollars is an astronomical figure to ordinary people, but as a hedge fund, it is an out-and-out small shrimp in the Wall Street ecosystem. It can be regarded as a small fish at best.

This year, he made $3.7 billion in a year by crazily shorting the American stock and real estate markets, a 370% return rate.

In early 2006, Wall Street generally believed that credit standards were too loose.

Such a loose monetary policy deserves caution, but it will not cause big trouble in the real estate and credit markets.

A large number of Wall Street's leading financial institutions are in this optimistic camp. Coupled with smartphones and mobile Internet, all financial institutions have reason to be optimistic.

New technologies, new application scenarios, and a large number of imaginative possibilities make most financial institutions very optimistic.

The 1990s created the Nasdaq bull market. At that time, many Internet companies were in bubbles, with very low revenue and profits, but high market value. It is different now. A large number of Internet companies have increased revenue and profits.

Take Baidu as an example, with annual profits exceeding 10 billion US dollars, it can be called a cash cow.

Even Face Chat, which was launched shortly after its launch, has an annual profit of more than 1 billion US dollars.

The positive cycle of smartphones-Internet applications-semiconductor technology makes financial institutions very optimistic.

There are bubbles, and appropriate bubbles are conducive to economic prosperity, economists say.

No one cares about John Paulson's counter-trend operation. If you operate this way in emerging investments, no one will compete with you.

Therefore, emerging investments can only avoid risks by investing in gold and energy companies.

But once the judgment is wrong, the loss will be serious. For such a huge amount of funds, if you don't make a profit, you will lose, because if you lose interest, you will also lose.

The result is that gold has skyrocketed, energy companies have stabilized in the plummeting stock market, and emerging investments are rare large financial institutions with good performance.

Countless times his judgment was accurate, making Warren Jensen wonder whether he was his own boss or not a species.

Even Zhou Xin's casual words made Xinxing Investment earn US$500 million.

At the beginning of 2006, when Warren Johnson came to Zhangjiang to hear about this year’s work arrangements, Zhou Xin said: “We can try to set up a hedge fund to short ABX.”

Zhou Xin casually mentioned it, and Warren Johnson took note of it. Later, Emerging Investment raised US$150 million in the market to short ABX, and they invested 70 million themselves.

ABX is the subprime mortgage bond price composite index/subprime derivative bond composite index, which is the "barometer" of the subprime mortgage market. Its index declines as the risk of subprime mortgage securities assets increases.

While the real estate market was still booming at the start, the new hedge fund kept losing money.

Soros also invested in the fund.

By the end of 2006, ABX began to fall and the fund appreciated by 20%. In February 2007, New Century Financial Corporation, Amerikan's second-largest subprime mortgage lender, forecast a quarterly loss.

The cumulative profits of emerging investment hedge funds have exceeded 80% in just one year.

Subsequent returns have continued to rise. By the time Zhou Xin came to Americen, the cumulative return of this US$150 million hedge fund was close to 200%.

Warren Jensen, who also invested $1 million himself, regretted not investing more at the beginning of this year.

To be honest, emerging investments have very good performance, so there is no shortage of customers, and many products can be consumed by their own internal executives and employees.

But why can Soros, the hedge fund shorting ABX created last year, still buy it? Because even the internal employees of Emerging Investments do not believe that subprime loans will explode and Amerikan’s real estate index will plummet.

The ultra-high yield of this hedge fund has made emerging investments even more popular this year when raising funds on the market.

Because emerging investments on Wall Street have always given the outside world the impression of being stable, a large amount of funds raised from Wall Street were invested in Xinxin Technology and turned into China's wafer factory.

Wafer fabs belong to the manufacturing industry. Even in manufacturing industries with high investment and high returns like semiconductors, its returns are not high compared with hedge funds.

Therefore, the short-selling funds of emerging investments have given Wall Street a new understanding. I didn't expect you to be able to do this.

Zhou Xin said: “We just need to wait and see, this crisis is not over yet.

It's far from over. "

On the brink of bankruptcy? Several major financial institutions must have collapsed before the festival was almost over, and where is it now?

“Should we acquire banks?

Our current business model is complete without commercial banks. asked Warren Jensen.

Warren Jensen never thought that he would be able to develop this organization to this scale when he joined Emerging Investments. Americen's branch alone has more than 500 employees and manages more than 100 billion in assets.

This is much more exciting than being a financial director at Amazon before, and it is completely different in terms of salary and resources.

Because Amazon is facing online competition from traditional retail stores such as Wal-Mart and Carrefour, and Alibaba has also entered the American market, its development is far less brilliant than that of later generations.

Zhou Xin said: “No, we are not short of funds and do not need to acquire commercial banks.

Our current scale and model are perfect and can be invested but do not require acquisitions. "

NewPay acquired a commercial bank because its business model itself is To C. After acquiring a commercial bank, its business will become more complete and the services it provides will be more diversified.

There is no need for emerging investments at all. It is like Buffett's Berkshire acquiring banks. It makes no sense.

Warren Johnson had this idea because he wanted to organize Xinxing into a consortium like Citigroup.

The performance of Zhou Xin and NewPay in this financial crisis has established a good image in the minds of American people.

After acquiring a commercial bank and changing its name to an emerging bank, it can quickly expand its scale with a user base.

Warren Johnson even wants to spin off WeChat Pay and invest in emerging investments.

If Zhou Xin is an American, there will be no problem with this operation. In the future, relying on emerging investments and Xinxin Technology, he will gradually influence the political situation in Washington and become an American family.

But the problem is that he won't be able to stay at Amerikan for long. He can't manage a commercial bank. Emerging investments are not like NewPay, which distributes all the benefits.

If any commercial bank is involved in emerging investment, it will be very passive once it is attacked by commercial banks.

So for Zhou Xin, the model of asset management plus investment banking is enough.

"Warren, pay more attention to technology companies on the market. If there are suitable prices, you can send me the information and we can invest in some technology companies with potential."

"Old Huang, we haven't seen each other for a while. I think Nvidia needs to focus on the graphics card field instead of doing things that we are not good at at all."

Seeing that Huang Renxun was the purpose of coming to America this time, Zhou Xin hoped to let Nvidia transfer some of its core and key R\u0026D departments to China.

Because of the financial crisis, Nvidia's life is not easy, and they have internally decided to lay off employees to achieve strategic contraction.

In addition, NVIDIA's previous biggest competitor ATI was acquired by AMD for US$5.4 billion, and they are under tremendous pressure at this time.

"I think parallel technology is okay, but Nvidia puts too much focus on mobile chips, which is completely unnecessary.

Maybe you would think that another company of mine, Xinxin Semiconductor, focuses on the research and development of mobile chips, so I don’t think Nvidia needs to do this.

But even if Xinxin Semiconductor has nothing to do with me, I still think Nvidia should not engage in mobile chips. "

NVIDIA is not yet the exclusive player in the field of graphics cards for future generations, and graphics cards are far less important than later generations. They are so important that they are limited to 4090.

The relationship between graphics cards and AI has not yet been explored.

Lao Huang was helpless, “When we made this decision, it was because smartphones were becoming more and more developed, and games on mobile phones had higher and higher performance requirements.

So we are thinking about transplanting our advantages in graphics cards to mobile chips, creating mobile chips that focus on mobile games, and targeting this market segment.

This can not only make smartphone chips, but can also be sold to handheld computers.

The advent of the financial crisis suddenly made our cash flow very tight. At the same time, the market environment dropped significantly, and we underestimated the difficulty of mobile chips. Various factors are intertwined. Our initial idea is to lay off the entire mobile chip department. . "

NVIDIA's mobile chip R\u0026D department is in Zhangjiang. Because the new core is in Zhangjiang, Zhangjiang is the most developed region in the world in the semiconductor segment of mobile chips. Any unknown company there can design a decent smartphone for you. Mobile phone CPU.

What they are trying to capture is a lower-level market. For example, if a piece of Chanque sells for 500 yuan, then our quotation is 300 yuan. Mobile phone manufacturers who purchase this kind of chips lower the price of mobile phones to 800 yuan and sell them to China's third and fourth grade brands. Go to line cities.

The cluster effect brought by the leading companies has led Qualcomm, Samsung, and Texas Instruments to set up R\u0026D centers in Zhangjiang to focus on the research and development of mobile chips, and Nvidia is no exception.

"Newman, you are right. We really need to focus all our energy on graphics cards. Currently, we have formulated a layoff plan for more than 400 people to consolidate and focus resources."