"My passion and madness are bigger than most people think. I admit, I have some crazy, but I enjoy my life." 59-year-old Sun Zheng sat in a conference room in a hotel in Silicon Valley and talked about him. Investment ideas.
The recent "crazy" move by the founder of Softbank Group was to acquire the British chip architecture vendor ARM in July for £24.3 billion.
ARM is a chip architecture vendor that does not manufacture chips itself. It continues to develop semiconductor intellectual property (hereinafter referred to as IP), and then licenses IP to Apple, Qualcomm and MediaTek partners, and partners to manufacture chips. After Intel's mobile phone chip strategy failed, ARM has basically monopolized the global smartphone chip architecture market.
On October 25th, ARM hosted the annual TechCon Developer Summit in California. Sun Zhengyi and ARM CEO Simon? Higas joined the conference. This is also the first time that the CEOs of both sides have jointly accepted media interviews after Softbank completed its acquisition of ARM in September.
Sun Zhengyi said that after Softbank privatized ARM, it could liberate its management, so that they no longer have to worry about the performance in the next few quarters, but to increase investment in R&D and become more radical in the development of technology. “Let me worry about ARM’s financial performance, not the financial investors in the capital market.â€
"I hope that ARM partners can understand that ARM's most basic business model will not change. Softbank will only increase its investment and make products appear faster." Sun Zheng said.
The industry has worried that Softbank, which has been heavily mortgaged for many times, will use ARM's monopoly position to increase the price of the entire ecosystem to share its financial pressure. Sun Zhengyi did not make a commitment to ARM not to raise prices. It only said that without the intervention of Softbank, ARM's revenue from each chip has been slowly increasing. "This is not because ARM wants to raise prices, but because ARM adds more features to each chip, such as having more cores and more complex IPs on a single chip." Sun Zheng said that he would not Move this trend that is already there.
Sun Zhengyi introduced the investment ideas of Softbank for ARM. He believes that the era of the Internet of Things and artificial intelligence is coming. "ARM is the center of this information revolution. Its chips will appear in various places and redefine various industries."
Sun Zheng cited Ericsson's data to predict that two years later, the number of chips used on IoT devices will exceed that of mobile phones, shifting the focus of the entire technology industry to the Internet of Things. In the next 20 years, there will be one trillion devices connected to the Internet, producing the same effect as the Cambrian life explosion. When the Cambrian explosion, the evolution of the organism was greatly accelerated after it was able to perceive the external environment. Nowadays, various sensors in the Internet of Things are the "eyes" and "tentacles" of artificial intelligence, which can continuously transmit data to the "super-smart brain" in the background, prompting them to learn continuously and thus rapidly evolve. After a certain period of time, this will trigger "singularity", that is, the super-smart of the computer surpasses the nodes of the human brain, which will rapidly evolve and bring subversive changes to the transportation, finance and medical industries.
In addition to the layout of ARM, Sun Zhengzheng is planning the future. On October 14, Softbank announced that it will establish a fund of up to US$100 billion with partners such as the Saudi Sovereign Investment Fund to invest in the global technology industry. Among them, Softbank will invest up to 25 billion US dollars in the next five years, and Saudi sovereign funds will invest up to 45 billion US dollars. Other partners are still negotiating.
Sun Zheng said that the US$100 billion will be used for one to two tens of billions of dollars in large mergers and acquisitions, a batch of $2 billion to $5 billion in medium-sized mergers and acquisitions and some small acquisitions of less than $1 billion. However, for the upcoming industry changes, this $100 billion is still "not enough".
Sun Zhengyi is not willing to disclose which companies he is looking at and refuses to comment on the rumors that Softbank will acquire Twitter. "There will always be more than a dozen companies on my list, but I will not disclose it." Sun Zheng explained, "When you look at these companies further, some companies may not be so attractive. If I follow They talked, they let me go, then I left. If I had a few meetings with them, the situation was better than I thought, I will act faster."
The outside world believes that Softbank chose to cooperate with the Saudi sovereign fund because Softbank’s debt level is too high and it is difficult to make leveraged purchases through loans. In this regard, Sun Zhengyi did not evade in the interview, but admitted that he was the "King of Debt."
Sun Zhengyi said that he will make a big leap in every major change in the industry, and therefore he has been questioned by all circles that Softbank will go bankrupt. “But many of the companies that competed with our original business gradually retired, either no longer exist or lost their former glory, but we survived the next wave of technology. This is what I believe in the future. The value that ARM can bring to Softbank."
Light-duty casters Manufacturer
NingBo Casters (China)Tecgnology Co., Ltd112 , http://www.sitez.com