A few days ago, a piece of news caused an uproar in the global tech community because our chips were in danger. Compared with the OEM sanctions of the old United States, this crisis is likely to bring about a bigger crisis.
Originally, Arm announced that the board of directors unanimously decided to remove Wu Xiongang, the current CEO of Arm China, and hired Liu Renchen and Chen Ke as co-CEOs, who have now completed the industrial and commercial registration, which means that Wu Xiongang has been completely kicked out this time.
This means that this two-year-long power war within Arm ended in the victory of Arm headquarters and SoftBank Son Zhengyi, and Chinese eventually lost control of Anmou China. Many domestic netizens exclaimed: "Wu Mengnan eventually lost to the comprador, and Anmou China eventually fell into the hands of the 'enemy'." ”
Arm: I just want to open a person, and I can't open it in two years
The conflict between Arm and Anmou China began to erupt in June 2020.
On June 4, 2020, Arm headquarters announced the removal of Wu Xiongang, CEO of Anmou China, on the grounds that Wu Xiongang had hindered Arm's strategic development and repeatedly violated the relevant regulations of the headquarters, and was repeatedly reported by employees.
On June 4, Anmou China sent a letter to refute the rumor that "the meeting convened by the board of directors is invalid, and Anmou China has the right to independence and autonomy." ”
On June 10, Anmou China once again issued a public announcement emphasizing that Wu Xiongang will continue to serve as the CEO of Anmou China and lead the company to continue to develop.
But then, Arm pulled the majority shareholder Hopu Investment to convene a board meeting, with a vote of 7:1, announced the removal of Wu Xiongang and appointed a new CEO to replace Wu Xiongang.
On June 11, Anmou China issued another statement, saying that the board of directors meeting and voting were not legally effective, and Anmou China would not accept such a result.
After two years of stalemate, Wu Xiongang has been firmly in the position of CEO of Anmou China, leading Anmou China to carry out its business in Anmou In an orderly manner. Arm headquarters, the major shareholder with 47.3% of the shares, actually has no way to take Wu Xiongang.
Many people don't understand why Arm is bent on driving wu Xiongang away, and what is the relationship between Arm and Anmou China? In fact, there is an important figure behind this - Sun Zhengyi, the head of Japan's softbank.
Why did Arm fire Wu Xiongang
In fact, it is not Arm's intention to fire Wu Xiongang, but the golden father behind it has spoken. who? It is Son Zhengyi.
In 2016, Son bought Arm for $32 billion.
Son Zhengyi wants to make chips? Of course not, for a businessman like Sun Zhengyi, it is better to do anything than to make money, and to do whatever you can do with money. At that time, the semiconductor industry was very hot, and Son Zhengyi fell in love with Arm at a glance, believing that it would definitely burst out of greater economic value in the future.
Although Arm has reached a weight-lifting position in the chip field, at that time, in the eyes of Son Zhengyi, it was not much different from other companies invested by SoftBank, and Son Zhengyi was more concerned about how much income this investment could bring to himself. To put it ugly, Arm is a "meat donkey" in the eyes of Son Zhengyi, and sooner or later he will slaughter and sell meat. But Son Zhengyi did not expect that the day of selling the donkey would come so quickly, and the donkey had not yet fattened, so he had to sell it.
Why? Because SoftBank has a hard time.
In recent years, Sun Zhengyi, who has always been known as the "Buffett of the investment world", has encountered Waterloo in terms of investment.
In 2019, the multi-level enterprises invested by SoftBank suffered disasters, Brandless, OneWeb collapsed one after another, Airbnb, Wework, OYO did not have a fight, one more than the other lost badly, even Uber, who was given high hopes by Sun Zhengyi, was also a money-losing commodity. In 2019 alone, SoftBank's losses reached 93 billion yuan.
At this time, Sun Zhengyi could only grit his teeth and sell some stocks in his hand, hoping to survive the difficulties. But what Sun Zhengyi did not expect was that he would usher in a bigger "money-losing goods".
In the middle of 2021, Didi not only failed to go public in the United States, but also was investigated by the relevant departments and ordered to be removed from the shelves by the regulatory authorities. This makes soft silver, which cannot be opened, even worse. That led son to have to sell Alibaba's $14 billion worth of stock to pay off the debt. For this practice, Son Zhengyi is very heartbroken.
On the one hand, Alibaba's current operating conditions are very good, holding Alibaba's shares for a long time, and the annual dividends brought to SoftBank are very impressive. However, this kind of "killing chickens and taking eggs" practice, Sun Zhengyi naturally will not do much.
On the other hand, Alibaba is also the most proud investment of Boss Sun, so sun zhengyi will not be willing to sell Alibaba shares until he "can't open the pot".
At this time, Boss Sun stared at Arm's meat donkey. Although Arm has not yet fattened, but in order to save the overall situation, Sun Zhengyi decided to sell Arm in advance, just when Sun Zhengyi was looking for a good home to plan to sell, a person jumped out and stirred up the good deeds of Boss Sun.
Wu Xiongang spoiled Son Zhengyi's good deeds, and the Arm acquisition must be agreed by China
In September 2020, Son sold Arm to Nvidia for $40 billion, and the two sides have signed a contract, and the two sides are ready to celebrate with champagne. However, at this time, Wu Xiongang took the lead in raising objections, buying and selling to anyone, but selling to Lao Mei was not negotiable.
Wu Xiongang is an idea with everyone, Arm can not fall into the hands of Lao Mei. No one can be sure whether there is someone behind NVIDIA's acquisition of Arm, and Lao Mei's ambition to control the entire chip industry has been clearly revealed in recent years. Now that Lao Mei has the X86 structure in hand, if the Arm structure is included in the pocket, then Lao Mei is not able to cut who is not pleasing to the eye.
Wu Angxiong led Anmou China to oppose this acquisition, many people feel unbelievable, the subsidiary with hair to the parent company's acquisition, is this really useful? It turned out to be really useful.
According to the laws of the mainland, if the turnover of a company operating in the mainland exceeds 10 billion yuan, then its equity change must be applied to the marketing department, of course, the Chinese market department is unlikely to stand idly by, and finally the acquisition was stopped under the efforts of many parties.
Wu Xiongang refuses to hand over "Schindler's list"
Although the acquisition was not reached, Son Zhengyi did not give up the idea of taking arm circle money. Boss Sun hopes to send Arm to the NASDAQ listing, with Arm's influence, financing is a piece of cake, not to mention can also help SoftBank "return blood" 60 billion US dollars.
However, this listing is still unsuccessful, and the reason is still because of Wu Xiongang. The listing of an enterprise requires the financial status of all its subsidiaries to be reported to the CSRC for review. But it was such a simple request that kept Arm out of the stock market.
Since the establishment of Anmou China, it has refused to submit financial reports to Arm headquarters. Needless to ask, this is also the doctrine of "Wu Magnan". Wu Mengnan's consciousness is very clear - you just need to accept money with peace of mind, and you don't need to ask more about the business, just give it to me.
In fact, There are two main reasons why Anmou China is reluctant to hand over financial data.
One of the reasons is that Anmou China does not want Arm to be listed, because it means that Anmou China needs to deal with more "golden fathers", and Anmou China has always hoped to have more autonomy, but the entry of capital will limit the development of technology companies. One Son Zhengyi has already brought so much trouble to An mou China, if there are more, it will not be more uncomfortable.
And the more important reason is that the financial statements held by Anmou China are not only a business data, but more like the "Schindler list" of China's chip industry.
Foreign blockades of China's chip technology are increasing day by day, and from chip raw materials to chip foundries, they have basically received "special care" from foreign manufacturers. Chip architecture as the lowest level of chip design technology, the significance of chip manufacturers can be imagined, once leaked, each manufacturer needs to use which architecture, how the technology development, the number of patents required, this information will fall into the hands of foreign businessmen, which means that as long as the opponent is willing, it can carry out targeted fixed-point strikes.
Previously, Chinese chip companies did not have to worry about structural security, because domestic business was generally handled by Anmou China, which means that the core data has always been in the hands of its own people. Although Arm has been chasing for data, Wu Xiongang has not disclosed the data to outsiders, so domestic manufacturers have no worries when cooperating.
For Anmou China, handing over financial data will not reach the point of making a big fuss. However, Wu Xiongang always believes that the business in the Chinese market should be handled by Anmou China itself, and there is no need for outsiders to intervene, so he resolutely does not hand over the data, which makes Arm unable to hang on his face and want to depose Wu Xiongang.
Wu Xiongang: Arm, you have no right to depose me!
Why does Wu Xiongang have such confidence? This has to start with the relationship between Anmou China and Arm.
When Anmou China was first established, it was only a sales company for Arm in China. Amin China needs to obtain technology licensing from Arm headquarters and represent Arm's business in China.
After Wu Xiongang joined, Anmou China's performance growth has grown by leaps and bounds, with Arm's revenue accounting for 27% in 2019, and Anmou China still accounting for 20% in 2021 in the face of successive crackdowns. Strong revenue capabilities have enabled Anmou China to gain a high degree of autonomy.
On the one hand, Anmou China has a permanent operation right and exclusive operation right in the Chinese market. This means that in the Chinese market, Anmou China does not need to be bound by patents and has the right to formulate its own business strategy.
On the other hand, Anmou China has the right to independently develop technology patents, and Anmou China has patent rights for independently developed technologies, even if Arm headquarters uses these patents, it is necessary to obtain authorization and pay patent fees. The Zhouyi AI platform developed by Anmou China in 2018 and the embedded processor "Xingchen" launched in 2019 have become important weapons for Anmou China's "anti-authorization".
Under the leadership of Wu Xiongang, Anmou China has become stronger and stronger, and it has become more and more autonomous, completely out of its own way. But in the eyes of Arm and Son, it was a threat. Anmou China is like a wild horse that has lost its reins and can no longer be controlled. The best thing Arm could think of was to "get rid of" Wu Xiongang.
But Mr. Wu did not want to quit, and he has always stressed that Arm is a company that is capital-controlled in China and can operate independently. In 2018, In order to cash out, Son Zhengyi sold a 51% stake in Anmou China to a Chinese investor for US$775 million. This means that Chinese capital has stronger control.
Therefore, as long as Chinese capital unites, it has the right to decide its own internal affairs.
Sun Zhengyi's conspiracy
However, Son Zhengyi is not so stupid, and he will certainly not give up his control over Anmou China, so when selling the equity, Son Zhengyi carefully designed the proportions. On the surface, Arm accounts for 49%, Chinese investors account for 51%, and Chinese investors account for a higher proportion. But in fact, China's investors are very dispersed, it is very difficult to integrate, and Son Zhengyi controls the proportion of each company when selling shares, avoiding a situation where one is dominant.
If Arm has a big move in the later stage, it only needs to win a shareholder on the Chinese side, so that the shareholding ratio can exceed 50%, and it can easily make a decision.
This time, when Arm dismissed Wu Xiongang, he pulled up Hopu Investment, and the combined shareholding ratio of the two sides reached more than 80%, which could easily decide any matter.
The compradors won, and Anmu China fell into the hands of the enemy
It can be said that from the perspective of professionals in the industry, Wu Xiongang's failure was foreseen as early as two years ago. In the world of capital, there is no emotion or morality to speak of, and there is only a constant pursuit of greater interests.
What is surprising is that Wu Xiongang has insisted on more than 2 years in the situation of "must lose", which is too crucial for China's chip industry for more than two years, and if there is no Wu Xiongang to win two years, China will not usher in a more severe blockade No one knows.
However, in this capital struggle, Wu Xiongang was finally defeated. In the end, it was the "compradors" who won the victory, what kind of fate will China usher in next? Listed? Divided? Controlled by foreign capital?
What we don't know is that Anmou China can no longer take into account the feelings of Chinese enterprises and has fallen into a deeper capital vortex. (Huo Hao)
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