Rebirth 08: Rise from copycat phones

Chapter 637 Yihai Kerry's IPO and the Large Aircraft
As September arrived, Shenzhen remained unbearably hot.

Various news items have emerged online. In early September, Zhuyun Group announced a new round of advanced semiconductor investment plans, with a proposed investment of 2.5 trillion yuan. It also announced the construction plans for two factories, the 41st and 43rd, which are used for second-generation 3-nanometer processes, as well as a 42nd factory for fourth-generation high-bandwidth memory.

The plan has generated a great deal of response within the semiconductor industry and related supply chains.

Not long after, overseas fruit companies also released their new generation of fruit phones, which also adopted the new generation of five-nanometer process!
What the average person may not know is that this generation of Apple products has finally started using communication baseband chips from Zhuyun Semiconductor. Although it is only used in some models, this means that Apple and Zhuyun Group have reached a cooperation agreement in the key chip field.

Apple uses Wistron's communication baseband for a simple reason: Qualcomm is too greedy, Apple has not achieved any significant results after years of developing its own communication baseband, and it also lacks the CDMA2000 patent, which is crucial for the North American market.

For years, in an effort to counterbalance Qualcomm, Apple has negotiated with Zhuyun Semiconductor almost every year to purchase and use Zhuyun communication baseband chips. However, these were always just talks, and no actual purchases were ever made. After all, Zhuyun Group has been Apple's core competitor for many years, and they didn't want to give money to their rival.

However, as time went by, the situation gradually changed... First of all, Zhiyun Group became more and more powerful, so powerful that Zhiyun Group no longer regarded Fruit Company as its main competitor!

The Zhiyun Group has started to get involved in artificial intelligence, promoting the development of the global AI industry, selling various computing chips globally, and also developing two new businesses: intelligent robots and virtual worlds.

This has led to increasing cooperation between Zhiyun Group and Apple in the fields of artificial intelligence and computing chips... Apple purchases APO graphics cards to train their artificial intelligence and to install APO graphics cards in their VR virtual reality devices.

Furthermore, it has also reached cooperation agreements with several companies under Xu Shenxue in the field of intelligent electric vehicles to purchase solid-state batteries, semi-solid-state batteries, and the EYEQ7 solution.

In addition to previous collaborations in the smart terminal supply chain, such as the purchase of solid-state battery pouches from Hailan Battery for portable devices by Fruit Company, the purchase of various high-end screens from Huaxing Technology, and the purchase of high-performance enterprise flash memory, high-performance smart terminal memory, and flash memory from Zhiyun Storage, etc.

Today, the business dealings between the fruit company and Zhiyun Group are actually quite extensive, involving a very large amount of money... Although in many areas, the products of Xu Shenxue's companies are just backups for the fruit supply chain, belonging to the 20% of the 80/20 rule in the supply chain, this 20% is still very important.

After all, in some high-end component products, there are only two or three companies in the world whose products can meet the technical requirements of fruit. In the Western industrial system, fruit is naturally the main supplier, but there are not many options for secondary suppliers. If they don't find Xu Shenxue, fruit really can't find a good secondary supplier.

With increasing cooperation between the two parties, last year, Apple finally made up its mind to cooperate with Zhiyun Group in the field of communication baseband, and began to use Zhiyun Semiconductor's single-band 5G full-network compatible baseband in some models.

Of course, the communication baseband used by Apple is still mainly Qualcomm's, with Zhiyun Semiconductor's communication baseband as an auxiliary... In addition, Apple has not given up on its own communication baseband.

This is similar to the situation with Samsung, which has long used Qualcomm and Zhiyun Semiconductor's communication basebands, but has never given up on developing its own communication basebands.

However, like the fruit company, they face very serious technical problems, and then there is the CDMA2000 patent issue that can never be resolved.

Currently, only Qualcomm and Zhiyun Semiconductor hold CDMA2000 patents globally; there is no third company… Moreover, these two companies never license their CDMA2000 patents to any third party.

This year, Apple used communication baseband chips from Zhuyun Semiconductor in some of its new phone models. This did not attract much attention from the outside world because ordinary consumers do not care what company's communication baseband chip Apple used... As for the attention from the industry, that is irrelevant.

Following Apple's release of its new phone, other major mobile phone manufacturers also successively released their new models.

Vcool Electronics Group has released the new generation of Blue MAX 13 Pro, which uses a 5-nanometer SOC that Zhiyun Semiconductor just released to the market in the first half of this year, and adopts a dual solution of ultrasonic fingerprint unlocking and side-press fingerprint unlocking.

It also claims to use top-of-the-line high-end screens, solid-state batteries, and more.

The price has been raised to start at 4,200 yuan, with the high-end model reaching 5,600 yuan.

This phone embodies the ambition of the Blue Brand, a subsidiary of Vcool Electronics Group, to continuously push into the high-end market... Of course, it's just ambition.

This model can only sell a few hundred units at most. The real sales volume is still the Blue MAX13 model released in the first half of the year, which is priced between three thousand five hundred yuan and five thousand yuan.

The price range of 3,500 to 4,000 yuan is actually the main sales volume range for the Blue MAX series. Although there are sales at prices above 4,000 yuan, the volume is not large!

Of course, when releasing various promotional materials to boast, they will definitely use models like the Blue MAX13 Pro, which can cost more than 5,000 yuan, as examples... They will say that their Blue MAX series costs more than 5,000 yuan and has annual sales of more than 30 million units.

Just days after Vcool Electronics Group released its new model, Four Star Electronics also released its new generation Galaxy model.

If we include manufacturers like Huawei, Xiaomi, and OPPO/Vivo, the mobile phone market during this period has been very lively, with various manufacturers releasing a large number of new models, all trying to sell more phones during the peak sales season in the second half of the year.

Along with the release of mobile phones, there were also a variety of other miscellaneous smart terminal products or PC products.

For example, the Blue brand under the Vcool Electronics Group has released its new generation of business laptops, claiming to use various advanced technologies and be the king of cost-effectiveness in business laptops... Of course, take their so-called advanced technologies with a grain of salt.

Well, many people in the industry know about VK Electronics Group: they never develop technology, they are just technology carriers!
And they never use the most advanced, top-of-the-line components...too expensive!
They all use products from mature supply chains.

Of course, to be fair, the appearance of their various products is really good. Industry insiders commented on Bai Qiwen, CEO of Vcool Electronics Group: "This guy is just a phone case seller!"
Every generation of the Little Blue MAX, regardless of its performance, has always been quite good-looking!

This style has also been carried over to the field of smart electric vehicles. The first-generation Blue Car, although it didn't have much technology, was really good-looking. If it was paired with colors like blue, pink, and purple, it would look very eye-catching... So, female customers accounted for a significant proportion of the customers who bought this car.

While manufacturers in the smart terminal field are showcasing their unique strengths, a grand feast is also brewing in the internet and financial industries!
Yihai Technology Group, under Xu Shenxue's control, has gone public!

Yihai Technology Group, as Xu Shenxue's most important and main internet company, ranks first in revenue and profit among domestic internet companies. Globally, it is second only to Google and Facebook in the internet industry.

Furthermore, Yihai Technology Group possesses a characteristic that other domestic internet companies lack: globalization!
When Yihai Technology Group was first established and started making mobile games, it was simultaneously targeting both the domestic and overseas markets. Yihai Technology Group's mobile game products quickly went global with the large-scale overseas expansion of the S series mobile phones, and then went on to Apple's channels and Google Play Store channels, thus completely going global.

As Zhiyun smartphones go global, many of Yihai Technology Group's internet products, such as maps, translation, and mobile browsers, are also gradually going global.

Later, Yihai Technology Group's ByteDance video was launched globally and quickly became a hit worldwide... This laid the foundation for Yihai Technology Group's global operations.

Building on the traffic generated by TikTok and other products, Yihai Technology Group has launched its international e-commerce business and is currently spending heavily to expand its reach globally.

Yihai Technology's scale, influence, and product coverage are on par with Google and Facebook!

This is a huge difference from other internet companies in China.

While several other domestic internet companies are also making a lot of money, they are mostly confined to the domestic market, and their overseas expansion strategies have been largely ineffective.

Therefore, Yihai Technology Group is a recognized global internet giant, and it has been on par with giants such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon for many years... Of course, in reality, it is still inferior to them!

In overseas markets, social networking businesses centered on short videos have been continuously squeezed by Google and Facebook, and can only be ranked third overseas in this area.

In e-commerce, Amazon is outperforming it.

The gaming business is in fierce competition with Microsoft... In addition to operating systems, office software, and cloud computing, Microsoft also has a large gaming business.

However, it has a global first advantage in many niche markets, such as mobile games and virtual games, short videos, and cross-border e-commerce (mainly relying on domestic merchants for export).

Yihai Technology Group is currently facing fierce competition in overseas markets and urgently needs substantial funds to expand its market reach…

The social networking business will have to compete with Google and Facebook.

In particular, the international e-commerce business, which is highly valued by Yihai Technology Group, requires the establishment of warehousing, transportation, and last-mile delivery channels in many countries. It also requires various advertising campaigns and promotional activities to attract customers from other e-commerce platforms or to explore emerging markets.

Then there's another area that's extremely expensive: artificial intelligence... Many of Yihai Technology Group's businesses have gradually integrated artificial intelligence, such as product recommendations on e-commerce platforms, video recommendations in short video businesses, and various AI-assisted functions in different businesses to make it more convenient and easier for customers to use.

These all require the use of artificial intelligence. In the early stages, they connected to Yun AI, and later they deployed GTAI on their own. By deploying GTAI on their own, they can train the data based on their massive amounts of data and create better big data models.

Deploying GTAI is very expensive... These days, computing power costs are not low. Not to mention electricity costs, APO graphics cards are extremely expensive!

Yihai Technology Group is currently short of money, and by hundreds of billions of yuan!
To address the funding gap and also to further distribute and bind profits, Yihai Technology Group had long been preparing for an IPO.

This year, we have successively introduced a number of strategic investors, including not only domestic strategic investors but also overseas strategic investors, and even some funds from India have been introduced...

Yihai Technology Group has a standalone short video product operating in the Indian market, and it holds a major market share there.

Previously, due to geopolitical issues, the Indian market had banned many internet products from China, including many products from Yihai Technology Group, such as ByteDance Video.

However, this kind of thing is not a big problem for Yihai Technology Group, which is based in China and has expanded globally... Yihai Technology Group has several "adopted sons" in the Indian market.

So, while TikTok appeared to be banned in the Indian market, many short video apps subsequently carved up the Indian short video social media market. Among them, an app holding over 70% of the market share was an American app. However, in reality, the absolute controlling shareholder of this American internet company is still Yihai Technology Group…

It's just that ordinary Indians don't know this, and those who do usually choose to keep quiet.

Indians love money too... The world isn't black and white, it's gray.

Therefore, many products that you think are domestically made are actually products of foreign companies.

You might think a company is a domestic enterprise, but it is actually a subsidiary of a multinational giant or a company controlled by foreign capital.

Multinational corporations are basically all like this... doing things recklessly and covering them up!

Yihai Technology Group's diversified investment strategy isn't limited to the Indian market; it's being implemented in other markets as well.

To avoid this situation, Yihai Technology Group started copying itself early on, and successively deployed hundreds of short video social products in the global market.

Plan ahead and mitigate risks!

Eggs cannot be put in one basket!

This has resulted in thirteen of the world's top twenty short video products actually being products of Yihai Technology Group.

However, some belong to the headquarters, some to overseas subsidiaries, and some to holding companies or partner companies. Moreover, many products actually have nothing to do with Yihai Technology Group on the surface... they are all held by secret offshore companies.

Therefore, most ordinary people only know that TikTok is a subsidiary of Yihai Technology Group, and very few people know that the other 12 of the top 20 short video apps are also subsidiaries of Yihai Technology Group.

For example, in the US market, the top three short video products are: first place goes to ByteDance Video, and the second place, while seemingly an internet company based in Silicon Valley, is actually a subsidiary of Yihai Technology Group, controlled through offshore funds... This company's products also hold a 70% market share in the short video category in the Indian market!
With years of early planning and a wealth of technological and operational experience, Yihai Technology Group holds absolute dominance in the global short video market. ————

In order to ensure the smooth operation of its business in most countries, Yihai Technology Group's global expansion naturally requires the attraction of local capital.

Therefore, the strategic investments made before this IPO included funds from China, Europe, the United States, Japan and South Korea, ASEAN, and even India.

Yihai Technology Group's listing will not be a simple mainland listing; it will also be listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange... This dual listing approach facilitates entry and exit for international investors.

Yihai Technology Group officially launched its IPO, attracting a large amount of funds for subscription before the listing, with the amount of funds subscribed in the domestic and Hong Kong stock markets reaching three trillion US dollars... The scale of funds attracted is extremely exaggerated.

However, the total amount of shares that Yihai Technology plans to issue, the subscriptions in the two stock markets, and the quotas of various institutions combined only amount to US$120 billion!

The oversubscription rate is extremely high!

Of course, this kind of thing is nothing to Xu Shenxue. When Zhuyun Group was listed on the US stock market and later on the Hong Kong and mainland stock markets, each time it attracted extremely large subscriptions.

Later, the listings of Weiku Industrial Group, Weiku Electronics Group, and Hailan Automobile Group were all accompanied by extremely large subscription volumes.

On September 27, after much preparation, Yihai Technology Group officially listed on both the mainland's Science and Technology Innovation Board and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

On the day of its IPO, its market value immediately exceeded one trillion US dollars, eventually reaching one trillion 110 billion US dollars, making it the world's second most valuable internet company, second only to Google!

There are reasons why its market value is so high. On the one hand, it has access to the vast domestic internet market and is the largest internet company in China... while other international internet companies cannot enter the domestic internet market.

On the other hand, Yihai Technology is also a global internet company, and the scale of its overseas business is actually larger than that of its domestic business... Overseas revenue accounts for more than 60% of Yihai Technology Group's revenue.

This year's projected revenue is around $100 billion, and profit attributable to shareholders is expected to exceed $20 billion... Although this money cannot be distributed as dividends, it will be reinvested in research and development, international e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and other fields.

However, the prospects remain promising for many investors.

The listing of Yihai Technology Group has also set off a new wave of wealth!

In its early days, Yihai Technology did not attract external investment; it was solely owned by Xu Shenxue through Liuhe Investment. Later, it introduced strategic investments from its various subsidiaries, such as Zhiyun Group and Hailan Auto, to solve the problem of development funds.

In the mid-term, we began to introduce strategic investments from both domestic and foreign institutions, all of which were large investment organizations.

Later, the strategic investors introduced this year are mainly from all over the world, with domestic funds as the main source and foreign funds as a supplement.

These investors, especially those who made strategic investments in the medium term, have all reaped huge returns on their investments.

Even the strategic investors who were introduced this year have made a lot of money.

Of course, they don't just take the money for nothing... There are thresholds to investing in companies like Yihai Technology Group. In addition to capital, there are many other additional costs to pay... For example, if a country wants to invest, it must ensure that Yihai Technology Group's business in that country is operating smoothly.

So-called strategic investment is actually just an exchange of interests!
Those who truly made money off the stock were actually investment institutions and individual investors who successfully subscribed to shares during the IPO process... they were the ones who made money off the stock.

They made a lot of money on the first day of listing.

However, internet companies... their stock prices fluctuate greatly, and there are risks involved.

Just because Yihai Technology Group is Xu Shenxue's company doesn't guarantee that its stock price will keep rising. That's not the case... There might be a super crash one day!

Therefore, investing in the stock market involves risks, and caution is advised!

The listing of Yihai Technology Group not only brought substantial returns to investors, but also to many of its employees.

Executives and core technical personnel hold a considerable number of stock options, and even many ordinary middle-level employees have stock options.

For many employees of high-tech companies like Yihai Technology Group, their salaries consist of wages, performance bonuses, and stock options.

Before Yihai Technology Group went public, employees could only have their shares bought back by the company after leaving the company, but the price was naturally relatively low.

After the company goes public, the value of the shares held by these employees will be much higher.

This round of listings has created a large number of billionaires in Yihai Technology Group, with Huang Jianian holding the most shares!
Huang Jianian's outstanding development and operation capabilities in the game field in the early days were an important factor in leading Yihai Technology to establish itself in the early days... In addition, in the early days, Xu Shenxue did not pay much attention to the operation of Yihai Technology. He was basically a hands-off manager, only providing basic strategic planning guidance.

It can be said that Yihai Technology's ability to grow and thrive to this day is inseparable from Huang Jianian's outstanding management skills.

Xu Shenxue also admired him and set several strategic work goals for him in the early and middle stages. As long as the work goals were completed, he could obtain a large number of stock options. Huang Jianian successfully completed the various strategic goals set by Xu Shenxue and thus obtained these stock options.

Later on, he was able to receive a considerable amount of regular stock options every year... After all, he was the CEO, and stock options were a very important part of his annual salary, as well as the main motivation for him to continue working hard.

Based on the stock price on the listing date, his shares in Yihai Technology Group are now worth over 80 billion yuan, enough to place him among the top richest people.

Besides Huang Jianian, several other important executives in Yihai Technology Group also have stocks worth tens of billions of yuan.

And there are even more executives and core technical personnel with assets in the billions or hundreds of millions.

As for those who become millionaires, they don't even need to be high-level executives; even some early employees can get them. They joined the company early, and the stock options they received back then are very valuable today.

Therefore, the listing of Yihai Technology Group is not only a cause for celebration for external capital, but also a huge reward for the hard work of many employees within the group over the past ten years.

The listing of Yihai Technology Group also added another listed company under Xu Shenxue's name, resulting in a huge increase in his nominal wealth.

However, these nominal increases in wealth no longer mean much to Xu Shenxue.

In terms of money, he has enough to last him a hundred lifetimes, even if he spent it all every day.

Having achieved this level of success in his career, money is simply a string of numbers to him...

Many years ago, his goal in starting his business was no longer to make money, but to pursue something more idealistic, such as overall economic development and employment opportunities, in order to make people's lives easier.

Then, pursue your personal interests and hobbies, such as developing controlled nuclear fusion, building interstellar spaceships, and ushering in a new era of interstellar navigation for humankind!

Therefore, many people who are familiar with Xu Shenxue will find that he has become more and more idealistic in recent years. His wife, Lin Yaxian, judged Xu Shenxue as follows: He is becoming more and more like a traditional idealist scholar-official, who believes in the idea of ​​"cultivating one's own virtue when poor, and helping the world when successful"!
It's so idealistic it's almost inhuman...

It's not that Xu Shenxue likes to show off or doesn't care about money; it's just that if you had access to a research system and trillions of dollars in wealth, you'd become just as idealistic...

While outsiders were still focused on the aftermath of Yihai Technology Group's listing, Xu Shenxue had already put those matters aside and gone to watch the excitement surrounding the new generation of domestically produced large aircraft.

Although he doesn't own a company that makes airplanes, he does have companies that work on space shuttles...

In addition, many of his high-tech companies are deeply involved in the research and development of domestically produced large civil aircraft... mainly providing various new materials and some subsystems.

In particular, several companies under Fairy Mountain Holdings have been deeply involved in the research and development of civil aviation engines, occupying a significant share. The research and development of the engine is nearing completion and has begun the airworthiness certification process.

For top-tier high-tech companies like Zhiyun Group, participating in major domestic scientific research projects is common practice, and it's pretty much the same in other countries...

Not to mention civil aircraft, Zhiyun Group is also the main contractor for the sixth-generation loyal wingman project and the sixth-generation manned fighter jet project: mainly responsible for providing unmanned driving systems based on artificial intelligence technology and command and control drone systems for manned fighter jets.

That is, the X system!

The entire X system is the core system for building a new generation of unmanned aerial vehicles and manned aircraft combined operations.

There is also a highly confidential AI battlefield command system that is still under development and unknown to outsiders. Its AI computing power array was built by Zhiyun Group... and its core underlying algorithm was also provided by Zhiyun Group's AI Research Institute.

The regional frontline intelligent command system was also developed by Zhiyun Group.

The AI ​​components of some ground terminals were also provided by Zhiyun Group.

There's also the massive satellite network under Zhiyun Satellite. Zhiyun Satellite has always emphasized that its satellite network is used only for civilian purposes and absolutely not for military purposes, nor does it provide military services to any country or organization... But for outsiders to actually believe that would be a bit naive!
Putting aside everything else, the key communication method of the X system is the Zhiyun satellite network... Every drone or manned aircraft equipped with the X system will connect to the dedicated communication network in the Zhiyun satellite network as soon as the system starts up!

Basically, most of the domestic defense projects involving artificial intelligence are related to Zhiyun Group to some extent.

Ordinary people don't know much about these things because they are all done in secret and through various shell companies. On the surface, Zhiyun Group never participates in defense projects.

However, it's no secret within the world's top circles... many people know that Zhiyun Group is actually a defense contractor!

Nobody's saying it out loud... What's the point of saying it out loud and letting ordinary people know, then making themselves miserable? What if some idiot starts yelling for sanctions against Zhiyun and a ban on the sale of Zhiyun APO graphics cards?
What happens within the top circles of the world is best left to those people; there's no need to make it known to the entire world!

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Many of the companies under Xu Shenxue's management have been deeply involved in the research and development of domestically produced large aircraft, and Xu Shenxue himself is quite interested in it.

I was particularly interested in the new model equipped with domestically produced engines, so I made a special trip to watch the test flight of the domestically produced large aircraft equipped with domestically produced engines!

After the new aircraft successfully completed its test flight, Xu Shenxue immediately placed an order with Zhiyun Aviation... to acquire a batch of cargo planes to support the development of this domestically produced large aircraft project.

He hopes that this project will continue to develop and that in the future his private jet will be replaced with a domestically produced large aircraft equipped with a domestically made engine!
After all, he is a tech giant in China, and it's not right for him to keep flying on European Airbus private jets. Sooner or later, he will have to fly on his own plane!

(End of this chapter)