From knock-off old-man's electric vehicles to industrial giant

Chapter 185 Starry Sky's Recruiting Operation!!

"We have long-term experience in collaborative development with the Baidu team, mainly dealing with technical alignment issues, resolving point cloud calibration, distortion compensation, and after-sales service for the LiDAR hardware itself..."

Li Yifan said.

But he reacted quickly.

"Mr. Xu, are you interested in the Apollo team?"

Xu Yi smiled and said, "Our Xingchen team is building an intelligent driving team and we are in need of personnel right now. Does President Li have any recommendations?"

"Hmm... If you need it, I can try my best to get in touch. Many of the original team members have left to start their own intelligent driving startups, but many others are also restless. We have been in contact with them about their whereabouts."

Li Yifan nodded.

He then explained to Xu Yi the whereabouts of the original team behind Baidu's L4 system.

Wang Jin, the former head of Deep Learning and Apollo Intelligent Driving Team, announced his formal departure in January this year, taking Han Xu, the chief scientist of intelligent driving, with him to co-found an autonomous driving company called Jingchi Technology.

In addition, Peng Jun, Lou Tiancheng and others also left the company and founded Pony.ai.

All of them have research centers in Silicon Valley.

It can be considered a newcomer in the autonomous driving industry.

It wasn't that no one tried to recruit them during that time.

However, these top academic talents each have their own ideas and beliefs, and many of them are aiming for a US stock market listing and to launch L4 driverless taxis in Silicon Valley.

With such lofty goals, they are naturally unwilling to work for others, and ordinary conditions are unlikely to attract them.

Take Xingchen Automotive's current scale as an example.

Even Baidu, currently an internet giant, is unable to retain this group of top academic talents, and the conditions offered by Xingchen are hardly worth mentioning.

Li Yifan also subtly expressed this point.

Even if they were to invest in an acquisition, they probably wouldn't relinquish control, just like Hesai Technology's current situation.

"It's alright, as long as you are a talented person who is willing to come, we at Xingchen welcome you."

Xu Yi said with a smile.

We can't capture these top geniuses who are recognized by the outside world.

Xingchen welcomes all high-end talents, and even mid-to-high-end talents.

With the right buffs, their senior talents can be used like top talents, and one mid-level talent can be worth two or three.

There are mysterious bonuses when you encounter a bottleneck.

Research and development progress has never been a concern for Xu Yi.

Moreover, the development of AI for intelligent driving in vehicles ultimately depends on the ecosystem.

It tests the collaboration of dozens or even hundreds of departments; algorithms, vehicle control, and chips are all inseparable.

When you encounter a problem, you can solve it directly using the most basic and efficient method.

Losing one or two top talents is not a big deal, even if they are poached by others.

Xu Yi and his group stayed in Shanghai for several days in a row.

After both parties finalized the equity investment agreement, the LiDAR project was essentially finalized.

Simultaneously.

After Li Yifan's introduction and in-depth understanding of Hesai, Xu Yi asked Fang Ziqiang to contact a headhunting company, and soon a group of candidates were identified for the intelligent driving team.

Xu Yi's requirements for this matter were very simple.

Dig as much as you can, the more the better.

What Baidu can offer, Xingchen can offer even more!
……

"President Xu, before coming here, I really didn't expect that the Starry Sky Strategy's path could be so extensive..."

On the way back.

Wu Xinzhou pushed up his glasses and couldn't help but sigh.

After spending the past few days with them, he has gained a deeper understanding of Xingchen Motors.

Traditional automakers tend to prioritize hardware development and adopt a conservative approach to AI and autonomous driving because they already have a set of established profit models. Even if intelligent driving solutions emerge in the future, they can simply use existing solutions.

New energy vehicle companies established in the last two years, or large internet companies, place more emphasis on big concepts such as software and AI, while adopting a "take-what-you-need" approach to hardware.

It's impossible for anyone to do everything.

Not only is my energy limited, but it's also quite strenuous.

But he discovered the path of the stars.

Whether it's software or hardware, even many of the most basic components, they all have to develop them themselves.

For example, yesterday, he saw Xu Yi remotely processing the latest sample photos sent by the company's seat factory, while also coordinating the progress of the internal combustion engine in the hybrid R&D department.

This is terrible.

A pure electric vehicle company that has already developed batteries is now turning around and developing internal combustion engines.

Even the seats have to be developed in-house?

Now they're betting on the autonomous driving and AI sectors.

If this R&D scale continues to expand, there will probably only be one or two companies in China that can rival it.

of course.

The risks will also increase accordingly.

"Hey—we Starry Sky people are just used to never asking for help from others."

Xu Yi was half-reclining on the sofa in the business class section when his voice came.

The scenery outside the window kept flashing by, and the light kept flickering.

Wu Xinzhou felt a surge of excitement. "I will take care of all the handover procedures as soon as I get back."

He began to look forward to it.

A company that places such emphasis on intelligent driving and R&D is bound to have a very exciting year ahead.

"By the way, we at StarCraft also plan to establish a chip design department..."

"Chip design?!"

"Yes, we'll have to rely on you in this regard."

……

The tone was very casual.

Wu Xinzhou was shaken.

Is this still a car company?
This technological layout is far too ambitious.

However, on the other hand, he really has a lot of room to maneuver in this area. "If we run out of lidar, we can still figure out a solution, but if we run out of chips in the future, we might really be left only to sigh at the Atlantic Ocean," Xu Yi said in a half-joking tone.

The words fell.

Wu Xinzhou felt a slight tremor in his heart again.

These seemingly casual words carry a weighty significance.

Xu Yi's idea was not unfounded.

In the long run, intelligent driving chips must be developed in-house.

Otherwise, it's easy to be held hostage.

It's not just about price increases and sanctions.

The self-developed intelligent driving chip has a more controllable cost and can be directly optimized for its own underlying algorithms, achieving a 1+1 greater than 2 effect.

Once the design of intelligent driving chips is mastered, we can independently develop chips with greater computing power.

As long as the chip fabrication is successful, even if the threat of sanctions cannot be completely eliminated, it will still have a greater degree of autonomy.

……

Next half month.

The autonomous driving business unit within Xingchen Automotive has been officially established.

Unlike many emerging electric vehicle companies and internet companies, Xingchen has not made a big fuss about this, but instead has been doing practical things on a large scale and with high efficiency.

Aside from some industry insiders who closely follow Xingchen Automotive.

The outside world knows almost nothing about Xingchen Motors' every move.

Fang Ziqiang and the headhunting company kept bringing good news.

It's probably because Baidu is too chaotic right now.

It's also possible that Xingchen Automotive's current scale makes it more attractive than other emerging car companies that prioritize intelligent driving.

Almost all the talented individuals who were considering changing jobs were moved by Mr. Xu's "sincerity"!

One to two to go.

The intelligent driving team quickly expanded to forty or fifty people.

Moreover, more than twenty of them were people who jumped ship from Baidu's original autonomous driving business unit.

Among them are Lang Xianpeng, who is in charge of high-precision maps and system integration; Zhan Kun, who leads the research and development of multi-sensor fusion perception; Zhou Peng, who is in charge of intelligent driving control algorithms; and Li Ligeng, a former member of the Apollo team...

These are all core executives from Xingchen Automotive's autonomous driving division.

at the same time.

Baidu headquarters.

Li Yanhong has been feeling uneasy lately. As the CEO of an internet giant, he feels that something is wrong, but he can't quite put his finger on it.

This uncomfortable feeling in my heart.

This is largely due to the loss of the original Apollo team.

Not only have Wang Jin, Peng Jun, Lou Tiancheng and others left, but even Andrew Ng, the chief scientist of the Deep Learning Institute, recently expressed his intention to leave.

This made him very irritable.

Let's not even mention that traitor Wang Jin.

Li Yanhong has already prepared a complete lawsuit for himself and his company. Not only did he bring Baidu's autonomous driving achievements to the new company, but the newly established research center is also not far from their Silicon Valley Apollo R&D center.

This is blatant theft of company secrets and a blatant disregard for confidential information!

of course.

If that were all, it wouldn't be worth mentioning.

Li Yanhong's real frustration stems from the fact that Baidu has held two or three high-profile intelligent driving summits in the past year or two, while also inviting major car manufacturers as well as traditional domestic brands such as Changan, Great Wall, and Geely.

However, no large order has been secured yet.

Without car manufacturers and other companies footing the bill, the massive amount of money burned in the early stages becomes a joke.

He parachuted Lu Qi in as COO, giving him control of core businesses including autonomous driving. This was also the reason he broke up the original L4 team into two intelligent driving business units, L4 and L3.

After so much research and development, it's time to monetize it.

If we don't produce some results soon, won't all the resources we've invested in the early stages be wasted?
Even after such sweeping reforms, the brain drain actually increased.

Li Yanhong didn't really care about this. After all, it's perfectly normal for a big company like Baidu to have staff turnover. Baidu has a huge pool of talent, if not an overwhelming one.

He found that emerging car manufacturers tend to pay more attention to intelligent driving and have more internet attributes, and are willing to make it a major selling point.

It would be quite good if we could package and sell the Apollo solution.

But after getting to know them...

Li Yanhong got his comeuppance again!
People would rather buy Israeli solutions than look at Apollo.

If things continue like this, he really doesn't know who to recommend this plan to.

He's quickly losing interest in continuing to invest heavily in research and development.

And so the end of the month arrived.

Please submit the latest internal reports on personnel allocation and transfers for the L4 and L3 autonomous driving business units.

Li Yanhong glanced at it.

It was immediately strange.

"Why did so many people leave again in the second half of the month?"

With sweeping reforms, it's not surprising that senior personnel leave.

After realizing his intentions, the senior members of the original team all submitted their intention to leave.

He also knew about Li Ligeng's departure this month.

However, this sweeping reform did not begin this month, and many of those who remained naturally preferred to continue to consolidate their positions.

But unexpectedly, the trend was quite abnormal.

Moreover, it's very regular, with a large empty space appearing all at once.

“At first we didn’t pay much attention, but later we found out that headhunters and other companies were targeting us to poach people.”

An executive immediately reported this.

"Who?"

"Our investigation revealed that it is a new player called Xingchen Motors."

……

(End of this chapter)