Recently, high-end general-purpose GPU (graphics processor) design company BiRen Technology started listing guidance. Led by Harvard PhD Zhang Wen, the company released the BiLi series of chips, breaking the global computing power record of general-purpose GPUs previously held by international giants. At present, one product in this series has been fully mass-produced and successfully commercialized. With an excellent team and rapid development, they have won the favor of dozens of institutions such as Qiming Venture Partners, IDG Capital, Walden China, Ping An Group, Hillhouse Capital, Gree Ventures, Songhe Capital, Yunhui Capital, Guosheng Capital, China Merchants Capital, Huaying Capital, Glory Capital, Gaorong Ventures, Cornerstone Capital, New World Group, Source Code Capital, Huachuang Capital, BAI Capital, etc., not only has the cumulative financing exceeded 5 billion yuan, but also the valuation has exceeded 15 billion yuan. As a member of China's "strong core" army, BiRen Technology can achieve outstanding results in a short period of time, which is also inseparable from the strong support of policies. Cities represented by Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen are firmly breaking through the thorns on the road to China's "strong core". They know that this is a competition that they cannot lose. Zhang Wen, a Harvard PhD entrepreneur, created a Shanghai star unicorn. Before founding BiRen Technology, he had rich experience. After studying electronic engineering as an undergraduate, he went to Harvard Law School for a doctorate. Not only has he worked as a lawyer, he has also worked in an investment bank. Later, he started a company with Zhang Rujing, the founder of SMIC, and also served as president of SenseTime. After judging that there are huge opportunities in the artificial intelligence chip track, Zhang Wen decided to focus on GPU with the idea of making top general-purpose computing chip products. When the industry trend is still unclear, he resolutely chose to start a business in the chip industry. Due to the long-term entrepreneurship in Shanghai before, coupled with the advantages of policies, talents, and industries, BiRen Technology was officially established in the local area in September 2019. However, it is not an easy thing to make some achievements. The particularity of the track requires capital-intensive, talent-intensive, and resource-intensive factors to make artificial intelligence chips well. In other words, it requires enough funds, enough talents, and a large enough ecosystem. For Zhang Wen, finding and convincing the right people to join the company was obviously a huge challenge in the early stages of entrepreneurship. With the help of his Harvard junior, he took a list of great people in the GPU field provided by the other party and communicated with them one by one. Feeling his sincerity, coupled with the goal of building a "Chinese core", Biren Technology soon gathered many industry elites including Hong Zhou, who was responsible for self-developed GPUs at HiSilicon, Zhang Linglan, former vice president of the overseas GPU department of Haiguang, and Li Xinrong, former global vice president of AMD. Such talent appeal also makes many investors willing to support them. At the same time, through cooperation with universities such as Tsinghua University, Peking University, Fudan University, Shanghai Jiaotong University, and Shanghai and other places, coupled with the recognition of industry parties and customers, their ecology is also growing rapidly. With huge funds and the right talents, Biren Technology has entered the fast lane of development as the industrial ecology is accelerated. In March 2020, the company's first general-purpose Bili series began to be established. 19 months later, the Bili series chips were delivered for tape-out and successfully lit up in March 2022. In August 2022, they officially released the Bili series of chips, breaking the global computing power record of general-purpose GPUs that had been held by international giants. At that time, another model of the Bili series was also unveiled, and later became the first product of Biren Technology to be fully mass-produced. At present, this general-purpose GPU has been installed on two computing power card products, Bili™104P and Bili™104S, and has been commercially implemented in multiple application fields. Not long ago, they also announced their own original heterogeneous GPU collaborative training solution HGCT. According to reports, this is the first time in the industry that 3 or more heterogeneous GPUs can be mixed to train the same large model. Not only can a unified solution be used to support multiple models and different manufacturers of GPUs, but also one line of code can be adapted to multiple frameworks. Including China Telecom, SenseTime Technology, State Grid Smart Grid Research Institute Co., Ltd., Shanghai Intelligent Computing Technology Co., Ltd., Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, etc., the company is working with customers, partners, and scientific research institutions to jointly promote the heterogeneous GPU collaborative training ecosystem. After five years of intensive cultivation, BiRen Technology has grown into a star unicorn in Shanghai by developing an original general computing system, establishing an efficient software and hardware platform, and creating a domestically-developed intelligent general computing industry ecosystem. In June 2020, the company, which was established only nine months ago, received 1.1 billion yuan from Qiming Venture Partners, IDG Capital, Walden China, Gree Ventures, Songhe Capital, Yunhui Capital, CDB Equipment Fund, Huaying Capital, Guangwei Holdings, and Yaotu Capital. World-class talent, technology, and management experience are important reasons why they have won the favor of many investors. In the view of Zhou Zhifeng, managing partner of Qiming Venture Partners, the core team of BiRen Technology has first-class experience in technology, market, and capital. Zhang Gaonan, managing partner of Huaying Capital, also bluntly stated that as a newcomer in the industry, they have gathered a large number of top technical and comprehensive professionals in a short period of time, and also have rich experience in market and capital. Two months later, BiRen Technology completed its Pre-B round of financing, with investors including Hillhouse Capital, Yunjiu Capital, Gaorong Ventures, Jinpu Technology Fund, Cornerstone Capital, Haichuang Fund, Songhe Capital, IDG Capital, Yunhui Capital, Zhuhai Da Hengqin Group, etc. This also means that they have raised nearly 2 billion yuan in total in less than a year since their establishment. As the lead investor in this round of financing, Hillhouse Capital believes that the BiRen Technology team has very deep technical accumulation in the fields of GPU and intelligent computing. At the same time, the development of China's artificial intelligence chips is at a critical stage, and BiRen Technology is facing a broad market with deep demand. By March 2021, with the support of Ping An of China, New World Group, Country Garden Venture Capital, Source Code Capital, Guosheng Group National Reform Fund, Harvest Capital, China Merchants Capital, BAI Capital, CITIC Securities Investment, Yijing Capital, Greater Bay Area Common Home Development Fund, China-Russia Investment Fund, Heyu Capital, Yigao Capital, Ruiyu Capital, Huachuang Capital, IDG Capital, Yunhui Capital, Zhuhai Da Hengqin Group, etc., Biren Technology completed its B round of financing, with a cumulative financing amount of more than 4.7 billion yuan. It is rumored that the company will complete a new round of financing in December 2023. However, they did not respond to this financing news. In round after round of financing, the valuation of Biren Technology has also risen. A person familiar with the matter revealed that the company's valuation has exceeded 10 billion yuan. According to the "2024 Global Unicorn List" released by Hurun Research Institute, their valuation is 15.5 billion yuan. At present, the company has no controlling shareholder. Among them, Shanghai Biren Enterprise Management Consulting Partnership (Limited Partnership), with Xiao Bing, the head of Biren Technology, as the executive partner, holds 12.65% of the shares, Zhang Wen holds 12.48% of the shares, Qiming Venture Partners holds 5.58% of the shares, and Liang Xiaoyao, a professor at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering of Shanghai Jiaotong University, holds 5.25% of the shares. "Strong core", a competition that cannot be lost. In recent years, as a strategic, basic, and leading industry supporting the country's economic and social development, the highly-watched integrated circuits have attracted many people to join. A year before Biren Technology was established, Suiyuan Technology started in Shanghai to develop cloud computing products in the field of artificial intelligence. By 2020, two GPU companies, Moore Threads and Muxi, were established one after another, and chose to land in Beijing and Shanghai respectively. These companies, including Sequoia China, 5Y Capital, Shenzhen Capital Group, GGV Capital, ByteDance, Lenovo Capital, Tencent, Matrix Partners, ZhenFund, Lightspeed, Shanghai Science and Technology Innovation Fund, WuYueFeng Science and Technology Innovation, Haisong Capital, CPE Source Peak, CICC Capital, Primavera Capital, and National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, have also attracted many investors. The names of these companies also appear in the "2024 Global Unicorn List" released by Hurun Research Institute. Among them, Moore Threads is valued at 25.5 billion yuan, Suiyuan Technology is valued at 16 billion yuan, and Muxi Integration is valued at 10 billion yuan. Although the primary market is in a downturn, it is not difficult to find through CVSource investment data that the semiconductor track is still relatively hot. In 2023, the number of investments in this track reached 1,042, and the investment scale reached 24.694 billion US dollars. By the first half of 2024, the semiconductor track still occupies a major position in the market, with 503 investments and an investment scale of 7.715 billion US dollars. At the same time, governments in many places are also vigorously supporting the development of the integrated circuit industry. By 2025, Beijing's goal is to achieve a revenue of 300 billion yuan in the integrated circuit industry, build an integrated circuit industry innovation highland integrating design, manufacturing, equipment and materials, and create an internationally competitive industrial cluster; Shenzhen is preparing to make the integrated circuit industry revenue exceed 250 billion yuan and build an influential semiconductor and integrated circuit industry cluster. For Shanghai, which regards integrated circuits as one of the three leading industries and has formed a complete integrated circuit industry chain, the integrated circuit industry has achieved sales of 325 billion yuan in 2023, and plans to build an integrated circuit industry innovation highland with global influence by 2025. To achieve such a grand goal, a huge amount of funds are needed to provide important support. Taking Shanghai as an example, Shanghai Reliable IC Headhunting Company, according to CVSource investment data (excluding mergers and acquisitions), professional institutions invested 123.542 billion yuan in Shanghai's integrated circuits from 2019 to 2023. In July 2024, Shanghai even released integrated circuit, biomedicine, artificial intelligence mother funds and future industry funds. Among the mother funds with a total scale of 100 billion yuan, the integrated circuit mother fund has reached 45.001 billion yuan, which will focus on integrated circuit related fields including but not limited to integrated circuit design, manufacturing and packaging and testing, equipment materials and components. Two months earlier than Shanghai, the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund Phase III Co., Ltd. was officially established in Beijing with a registered capital of 344 billion yuan, and it was stated that it mainly engaged in equity investment and asset management activities related to integrated circuits with private equity funds. For entrepreneurs, whether they can make good chips is related to the success or failure of the company. However, for the country and the government, "strong chips" is a competition that cannot be lost.
