Chapter 324: The First Engineers of Self-Developed Chips

On the second day of Yu'e Bao's launch, 1.3 million new users signed up, bringing the total number of users who activated the service to 40 million, with funds under management reaching 24.4 billion Huayuan.

On October 13, Tencent sued 360 for "unfair competition."

The reason was simple: 360 Security Guard forcibly blocked QQ Browser's update program, obstructing Little Ma's mobile transformation.

When Chen Yansen arrived at the company and turned on his computer, he saw Zhou Hongyi's "friendly greeting" to Ma Wenteng on Weibo.

After learning the general outline, he couldn't help but chuckle, feeling a surge of admiration for Zhou Hongyi.

This guy gets itchy if he doesn't stir up trouble for two days.

Among internet entrepreneurs, finding a friend of Zhou Hongyi is like searching for a needle in a haystack, but finding his enemies? One brick knocks down a whole crowd.

Those who have cursed Zhou Hongyi and those whom Zhou Hongyi has cursed, when gathered together, form the golden twenty years of China's internet.

Chen Yansen shook his head; though he got along well with both sides, he had no interest in mediating Little Ma's feud with Big Cannon Zhou.

Meanwhile, the Double Eleven promotional schedule for Taobao Mall has been set: October 15 to November 10 is the presale phase, November 11 is the official launch date, and November 12 to 13 is the limited-time comeback event.

Zhang Yong had absorbed 99 percent of Pinduoduo's wild tactics.

What was originally a one-day e-commerce festival had been stretched into thirty days.

JD. com copied the model: presale period from October 18 to November 10, with official launch and limited-time comeback dates matching Mama Ali's.

And their presale started three days earlier than Taobao Mall!

To counter this, Huang Zheng adjusted his strategy on short notice, moving the presale date forward by one day to October 14—tomorrow.

From the user's perspective, a one-month e-commerce cycle is just too long and annoying, ruining the shopping experience.

But from the merchant's standpoint, extending the sales period allows full release of consumer demand.

For users who struggle with decisions, one day is simply not enough.

The third piece of news relates closely to Pinduoduo: although over forty days had passed since signing the Series B funding agreement, Senlian Capital didn't announce it to the media until October 12.

First, to build momentum for Pinduoduo's Double Eleven promotion and attract more traffic; second, to increase brand exposure and attract top talent; third, to raise company valuation for future funding or IPO moves.

"Following JD. com, e-commerce's second-place player Pinduoduo Mall has completed its Series B funding, with a post-investment valuation of 22 billion USD!"

"Pinduoduo raised 2.2 billion USD, becoming Mama Ali's greatest threat!"

"At age twenty, Chen Yansen now owns another billion-dollar company!"

Chen Yansen glanced at the headlines and thought the self-media outlets were masters of provocation; it wasn't hard to imagine how heartbroken Liangzai Dong would feel upon seeing these articles.

After years of struggle, JD. com's valuation stood at only 8 billion—less than half of Pinduoduo's.

Ten minutes later, Chen Yansen closed the webpage, logged into the data backend, and checked the core metrics of each project as usual.

Meanwhile.

After settling his family, Zheng Shengyu purchased a one-way high-speed train ticket from Jin Ling to Xu Cheng.

Only after the train departed did he realize with a bitter smile that at his age, he'd still acted impulsively like a youth—after being persuaded by a few words, he'd uprooted his entire family from San Diego, California, and returned home.

After years away from his homeland, China had undergone earth-shattering changes.

3G networks were widely deployed, 4G networks were in preparation, China's internet users approached 600 million, mobile users exceeded 1.1 billion, and smartphone users neared 400 million.

As far as he knew, the Alexa smart speaker, popular across Europe and America, was a product of Sister Chengzi Technology.

In his eyes, it was hard to imagine a voice assistant so technologically advanced could come from within China.

The Echo voice interaction engine Amazon had just launched couldn't match Alexa's speed or accuracy.

Zheng Shengyu felt perhaps out of curiosity, perhaps out of being swayed—he still felt his heart race when recalling his conversation with Chen Yansen.

His long-dry patriotic heart seemed awakened once more.

The scenery outside the window flashed by rapidly, and Zheng Shengyu sank into memories.

He was a native of Jin Ling, graduated from Tsinghua University's Electronic Information Engineering program in 1993, then pursued further studies at the University of Toronto, and five years later joined Gao Tong, starting as an ordinary chip design engineer; after fourteen years of hard work, he finally became a lead engineer.

Annual salary: 180,000 USD!

In Europe or America, that was middle-class status!

But he knew well: Gao Tong didn't favor Chinese engineers; lead engineer was nearly the ceiling for Chinese staff—only a tiny fraction broke through to senior lead engineer.

Above senior lead engineer came director engineer, senior director engineer, and chief scientist.

He was forty years old—what room for promotion remained?

But Chen Yansen was different: he offered him the title and salary of director engineer outright—an annual package of 1.8 million Huayuan, plus over ten benefits including six insurances, two funds, and stock options.

Better to throw himself into China's domestic chip industry than to be someone's dog.

His years at Gao Tong weren't wasted—he'd moved from baseband integration to IoT chips, then to RF R&D; beyond his core duties, he could also handle architecture design.

With Zheng Shengyu's ability, director engineer was more than enough—but Gao Tong refused to give him the chance.

From southern Jin Ling to eastern Xu Cheng station, the journey took only one hour.

Zheng Shengyu pushed his suitcase out of the high-speed station, then opened his phone, used Kuai Di, and booked a business car.

The U. S. had similar ride-hailing apps—something called "Uber"—clearly, China's internet development speed wasn't behind Europe or America.

In these few days back home, he'd tried group buying, food delivery, e-commerce, and express delivery—all far beyond his expectations.

Though the U. S. had similar apps, their delivery efficiency and functional convenience couldn't match domestic competitors.

Because China's market was larger and more capital was focused on it, a brand-new industry would often spawn dozens, hundreds, even thousands of companies from its very beginning.

After brutal competition, prices and services would be driven to extremes.

Like breeding monsters in a pot!

European and American competitors were no match at all!

Three minutes later. Zheng Shengyu verified the license plate and got into a BMW.

After confirming his phone's last digits, the driver started the trip and sped toward Zhuxianzhuang Technology Park.

"Are you an employee of Sister Chengzi Technology?" The driver, a man in his thirties, noticed Zheng Shengyu staring out the window and asked.

"Why do you ask?" Zheng Shengyu turned back and looked at the driver.

"The most famous companies in Zhuxianzhuang Tech Park — first is Sister Chengzi Tech, second is Pinbei Mall, third is Sister Chengzi Pay, fourth is Today Tech. They're all star enterprises of our Xucheng. I heard there used to be a few small companies moving in, but they all moved away later. Now only these four companies remain."

The driver introduced proudly.

Although Chen Yansen is not from Xucheng, he is a college student at Xuyuan, and in the eyes of locals, he counts as half one of their own.

"I'm going for an interview." Wu Zhengyu smiled faintly, not telling the truth.

"Then I wish you all the best!" the driver replied with a grin.

The two chatted on and off, and in less than twenty minutes, the taxi drove into the tech park and stopped in front of Building Nine.

"See, Sister Chengzi Tech is in the building right in front of you. Across the way is the headquarters of Pinbei Mall, and beside it are Sister Chengzi Pay and Today Tech."

The driver rattled it off like a family treasure, looking extremely familiar with it.

After all, he often drove staff from Sister Chengzi Tech, Pinbei Mall, and Sister Chengzi Pay to the high-speed rail station, and occasionally struck up a chat or two, picking up some basic information.

"Thank you." Wu Zhengyu nodded in reply and pushed open the car door.

"Hold on, let me get your luggage for you." The driver was extremely enthusiastic — this was a business-class vehicle, with higher fares, so naturally the service wouldn't be shabby.

Meanwhile.

Chen Yansen received a message from Wu Zhengyu, then walked to the window, just in time to see Wu Zhengyu who had just gotten out of the car, and the driver busy moving luggage.

Like Wu Zhengyu's chip R&D engineers, he had poached over seventy people in one go from companies like Gao Tong, Broadcom, AMD, and Nvidia — among them both Chinese engineers and European-American engineers.

A spiritual power value exceeding 100 made it very easy for him to "persuade" these high-end talents in the chip field.

Of course, this kind of "persuasion" was not coercive. Chen Yansen, holding the list, had communicated with more than 130 chip engineers in total, but only these seventy-plus had agreed to return to the country.

It wasn't that he hadn't thought about recruiting domestically, but if he wanted to design top-tier chip products and go head-to-head with Gao Tong, there was only one path: poaching people.

In 2012, the domestic chip design industry was only at an early stage of development—it could only handle industrial chips at 32nm and above processes. Designing highly precise mobile processors, communication basebands, memory chips, and the like was already extremely difficult.

Chen Yansen pushed open the office door, walked into the elevator, and went straight down to the first floor. When he reached the first-floor lobby, he happened to bump right into Wu Zhengyu, who was about to walk in.

"Mr. Wu, welcome back to the country, and welcome to Sister Chengzi Tech's Chip Design Department as Chief Engineer."

As Chen Yansen spoke, he extended his right hand.

"Mr. Chen, hello. Thank you for your recognition of my personal abilities. I don't think I'll let you down."

Wu Zhengyu instinctively raised his head. Upon seeing Chen Yansen, his heart gave a slight jolt, but he quickly recovered and hurriedly grasped the other's right hand.

Although he had seen photos of his new boss in advance, he hadn't expected Chen Yansen to be even younger than he had imagined.

A tall, upright frame of one meter eighty-six, a faint smile on his face, and an extremely heavy presence about him.

He had met Gao Tong's CEO Paul Jacobs, but Paul's aura was nowhere near as Solemn as Chen Yansen's — it even made him feel a hint of pressure.

In an instant, it made him tuck away any trace of underestimation.

"You're the first batch to report for onboarding. The company has arranged a two-bedroom, one-living-room commodity apartment for you in the downtown area, plus a commuter car worth 500,000. If there's anything in daily life you're not used to, you can find colleagues in the Administration Department to help coordinate. Let me first take you to see the office environment of the Chip Design Department."

Chen Yansen gave a brief rundown, then led Wu Zhengyu into the elevator, and together they headed up to the seventh floor.

Prior to this, he had already procured a complete set of electronic design automation software, including logic synthesis tools, HDL development tools, algorithm architecture design tools, automatic place-and-route tools, and physical verification tools.

And with Wu Zhengyu and others, he had confirmed the high-performance servers, storage systems, dedicated switches, and high-resolution displays they would need during the chip design process, to ensure work could proceed smoothly.

Chen Yansen was not afraid of spending money!

He understood well in his heart that once self-developed chips succeeded, the hardware profit margin of Sister Chengzi phones could step up another level, allowing him to pay higher wages to front-line workers, after-sales maintenance, operations, management, sales, and other personnel.

And only then could he obtain more Human-Cause Sparks!

As for building Hua country's self-developed chips and promoting the development of Hua country's chip manufacturing industry — that was nothing but ghost stories he used to fool people like Wu Zhengyu.

For those who could be won over by emotion, he appealed to great righteousness.

For those who were extremely rational and looked only to the future, he would just throw money at them — offering 1.5x or 2x annual salaries — and keep throwing until the other party accepted the offer.

……

……

Hangcheng, headquarters of "Geek Auto" magazine, CEO's office.

Hu Weiyi sat in her seat, smiling as she thanked Cheng Weixing again and again: "Thank you, junior Cheng. Once I'm done with this busy stretch, I'll treat you to a meal."

"You're too kind, senior. The shared-bike track has real potential. I believe with the boss's business nose, he definitely won't pass up your project."

Cheng Weixing replied with a smile.

Earlier, he had heard Gao Weilin mention that the boss had an interest in investing in the shared-bike field, so as soon as Hu Weiyi came to him, he recommended Senlian Capital to her.

"Then I'll go contact Mr. Chen first." Hu Weiyi said. As for Chen Yansen, she was indeed full of curiosity about him.

(End of chapter)