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produced by phoenix technology's "eye of the storm"

author: xu zhen

editor: dong yuqing

after leaving his job in the first half of the year, wang qun thought he would no longer have any contact with his former company, until not long ago, when he noticed news circulating online that his former company had made large-scale layoffs and was almost disbanded.

this company is "xiangdixian", a chongqing high-performance gpgpu (general graphics processing unit) design company founded in 2020. it was once a star player with the halos of "chinese version of nvidia", "little giant" and "unicorn".

picture｜from the internet

because of this, wang qun was somewhat surprised. he sent a message to a former colleague with whom he had a good relationship: "really?" the colleague replied: "it's the same as what the news said." with an expression of covering his face.

along with the news, there were two pictures circulating on the internet. one was an internal layoff notice of xiangdixian, saying that the resignation procedures had been simplified; the other was an announcement of xiangdixian refuting rumors of dissolution, saying that it was "making every effort to seek external investment opportunities."

picture｜from the internet

however, according to several employees, although xiangdixian’s explanation to employees now is that the company is “temporarily dormant,” it is still unknown how long the dormancy will last and whether it can “wake up.”this was a bolt from the blue for hundreds of employees.

more than 400 employees lost their jobs overnight

the shoe dropped one day in late august.

tang zhimin, founder, chairman and ceo of xiangdixian, appeared at an online communication meeting for all employees on the afternoon of august 30. he said that due to being sued by shareholders and the company's funds being frozen, it could only terminate the contracts with employees and provide compensation according to n+1.

figure｜founder, chairman and ceo of xiangdixian

tang zhimin (from the internet)

however, the company did not publicly announce the specific time of payment of the relevant compensation.

phoenix technology learned from multiple independent sources that at the end of 2023, xiangdixian's employee size reached a peak of more than 800 people, but the number of employees has continued to decline since this year, with more than 400 people left before this turmoil broke out.

"but the number of people with salary disputes exceeds this number. a conservative estimate is 600 people, and a rough estimate of the total amount of unpaid wages is between 40 and 50 million yuan."this was revealed by xu dong, a former employee of xiangdi.

"in chronological order, the company laid off 100 to 200 people in may and promised to pay compensation on september 30, but there is a high probability that it will breach the contract. there are also colleagues who voluntarily resigned between july 10 and august 30 and have not yet received their wages for this period, as well as the two months of unpaid wages that occurred earlier (at that time, xiangdixian only paid the part of the salary below 20,000, and the part above 20,000 was recorded as unpaid wages). finally, there are the more than 400 employees involved in this dissolution storm, who were already owed two months of wages, plus n+1 compensation." he said.

the more than 400 employees facing layoffs are in a dilemma.according to an insider, the labor termination agreement given by xiangdi first stated that employees were required to voluntarily give up the previously promised year-end bonus, "but if they don't sign, they won't get a resignation certificate, and even if they get an offer after the interview, they won't be able to start work normally."

xu dong himself was one of those who voluntarily resigned in july and was owed wages. the part of the salary that he has not received was originally agreed to be paid by xiangdi in early august, but it has been delayed for more than a month.

however, an insider analyzed that the situation is not optimistic about whether the former employees represented by xu dong can get back their unpaid wages:"recently, xiangdixian has only about 15 million yuan in funds on its books, but the average monthly wage cost per person is 50,000 to 60,000 yuan, so the books are not balanced. the only thing to be thankful for is that they have always told the company that the employee stock ownership platform and the operating entity have been well isolated from the risks, so the money in the stock ownership platform is unlikely to be frozen."

according to his understanding, "some employees had spent 1 million yuan to buy the company's original shares because they were optimistic about xiangdixian's listing prospects. but so far, xiangdixian has not mentioned the issue of returning the shares to employees, nor has it provided any other solutions."

picture｜xiangdixian’s previous publicity

domestic high-performance general-purpose gpu leader

wage arrears are not the only problem. an employee of a supplier of xiangdixian said that xiangdixian still owes the company a sum of money. "they can't even pay their employees' wages, so it's even harder to pay us back. there's very little we can do."

a unicorn with a valuation of 15 billion was dragged down by a 500 million "big gamble"?

according to the internal explanation of the founder tang zhimin, the direct reason why the company fell into such a situation was the lawsuit filed by shareholders.the underlying content is that xiangdi had previously signed a bet agreement with shareholders, promising to raise 500 million yuan in round b financing. since the target was not reached, the shareholders initiated this lawsuit.

for xiang dixian, who once was invincible in the capital market, the contrast effect contained in this plot needs no further explanation.

in september 2020, xiangdixian was officially registered in chongqing. the company's founder tang zhimin holds titles such as chief researcher of the institute of computing technology of the chinese academy of sciences and deputy director of the committee for the examination of computer science and technology terminology. as early as 1999-2004, tang zhimin served in the "high-performance general-purpose cpu chip development" research group of the chinese academy of sciences, and led the team to develop the loongson 1 and 2 chips, which are known as "china's first general-purpose cpu with complete intellectual property rights."

in the industry, he also has a well-deserved reputation. in 2002, my country's first independent controllable cpu research and development and industrialization enterprise "beijing shenzhou loongson integration" was established, and tang zhimin later served as the general manager of the company.

in 2014, the chinese science-based cpu company "haiguang information" was established, and tang zhimin became one of the founders. since then, he has facilitated the cooperation between haiguang information and amd, an international gpu manufacturer. in 2022, haiguang information successfully landed on the science and technology innovation board, becoming the second domestic cpu stock after loongson.

in addition, xiangdi was established during the explosive growth period of the domestic general-purpose gpu industry. many projects were established around 2020, such as suiyuan technology (2018), biren technology (2019), muxi integration (2020) and other gpu projects were completed in the same period.

from all angles, this was once a star project that attracted all the interest from investors. according to iqiyicha, in 2020, 2021, and 2022, xiangdi first raised funds once a year, and in 2023, it completed two rounds of financing, c and c+. among them, the scale of the b round of financing that caused the shareholder lawsuit was rmb 436 million.

from the perspective of shareholder lineup, xiangdi first introduced yarui capital, qianzhan investment, chengguang private equity, qianhai yangtze river fund, qianshan capital, shuimu chunjin, etc.

during this period, xiangdixian gradually expanded its scale and established branches in beijing, shanghai, chengdu, suzhou and other places.

i just didn't expect that in such a short time, the good times would pass and the mess would be left behind.

it is worth noting that according to market information, xiangdixian raised a total of approximately rmb 2.5 billion in financing in the past four years, and the company's valuation was approximately rmb 15 billion.

figure｜xiangdixian from its establishment in 2020 to now

five rounds of financing have been completed

in the chip research and development industry, which is known as a "money-eating beast", this scale is not outstanding.

in comparison, suiyuan technology, also a gpu company, completed its series d financing in september 2023 alone, with a scale of 2 billion yuan.

when the gpu myth comes to an end

in addition to the small scale of financing, xiangdixian has not yet established a healthy profit model, which has also become one of the reasons for the company's downfall.

wu mengfei, a senior semiconductor industry insider, analyzed that in addition to the long payback period and huge initial investment of chip startup projects,"although it once claimed to be the chinese nvidia and based itself on gpgpu, xiangdixian's target market is mainly ict (information technology application innovation). the extremely long customer payment cycle is one of the characteristics of the ict market. if the balance is not good, startups with insufficient funds will be 'dragged' to death."

the main application market of gpu in china can be divided into general computing represented by nvidia (ai training and reasoning, high-performance computing), graphics display (assisted design, games, virtualization, etc.), and the information technology innovation field with high demand for domestic substitution and security and controllability.

public information shows that xiangdixian currently has two chip products, of which tianjun-1 will be released in september 2022 and mass-produced in june 2023, and tianjun-2 will be officially released in september 2023. at the launch conference of tianjun-1, tang zhimin said: "xiangdixian is determined to provide a safe and reliable high-performance core computing engine for the prosperity of china's information industry."

after embracing slogans and ideals, the cruel reality finally appeared in front of xiangdixian. in today's fiercely competitive gpu market, the dilemma faced by xiangdixian is not an isolated case.

"in fact, xiangdixian is not the first gpu company to fall," wu mengfei recalled to phoenix technology. "a similar situation also happened to lisuan technology."

lisuan technology was founded in august 2021. its product concept is to develop gpu products with independent intellectual property rights based on self-developed architecture. it completed angel round and pre-a round of financing in 2022, with a financing scale of 300 million yuan.

however, since 2023, due to the inability to leverage new investment, high operating costs and other reasons, lisuan technology began to experience wage arrears and layoffs, and entered a dormant period.

wu mengfei told phoenix.com that at that time, lisuan technology "laid off all the people who could be laid off, retained a small team, and stopped paying salaries for 18 months." among those who stayed, "in addition to the core team such as the founder, there were also some employees who bought the original shares and investors, who were all trapped."

this state of "hibernation" and "dormancy" continued until this year, when lisuan technology finally received the "life-saving money". on august 20, the listed company dongxin co., ltd. issued an announcement that it planned to increase capital in the domestic gpu manufacturer lisuan technology through its own funds of 200 million yuan, subscribing to its newly increased registered capital of 5 million yuan in exchange for 37.88% of lisuan technology's equity.

however, considering the huge amount of money needed to repay debts, invest in research and development, and tape-out, lisuan technology will face considerable pressure in the future.

on september 17, the day of the mid-autumn festival, xiangdixian’s wechat public account was updated again after 16 days. the last update was on september 1, when it issued a clarification announcement on the company’s dissolution.

image: xiangdixian’s wechat official account released a clarification announcement on the company’s dissolution

this time, xiangdi first released a poster to celebrate the mid-autumn festival, which read "may everyone have a prosperous family and be happy and free from worries during the full moon."

a former employee told phoenix technology that the words "peace and worry-free" now seem a bit absurd.

(at the request of the interviewees, wang qun, xu dong, and wu mengfei are pseudonyms)