In July 2023, Huawei HiSilicon reported to the police that chip technology had been stolen, and Shanghai** successfully arrested 14 criminal suspects, including Zhang Kun, the founder of "Zunpai Communication", a former Huawei HiSilicon executive.
In September, it was reported that Qualcomm's China WiFi department laid off employees.
The chip developed by Xiaomi is called The Paper", and the company suspected of stealing secrets is called "Zunpai Communication", and Xiaomi's subsidiary is the main angel investor of "Zunpai Communication".
When we put these three things together, it doesn't just make us think about two frightening questions:
1. Is Xiaomi involved in the theft of secrets?
2. Was the chip technology stolen by Qualcomm?
Zhang Kun, the founder of Zunpai Communications, is the former 21-level technical director of Huawei HiSilicon, with more than 20 years of experience in the semiconductor industry, and has presided over the development of a number of short-range Internet chips. He resigned from Huawei HiSilicon in 2021 and founded Zunpai Communications. In May 2022, it received hundreds of millions of angel round investments, including Xiaomi. Before the accident, the A+ round of angel investment had been finalized, and there were also hundreds of millionsTheir investors include Qualcomm, Xiaomi, Hushan, Skyline Capital, and many more. These companies are staring at the chips of the company's core business routers.
It is understandable for Zhang Kun to leave Huawei HiSilicon to start his own business, but he is determined to take shortcuts, take shortcuts, touch Huawei's core interests, and do something that should not be done.
He used high salaries, equity, etc. as bait to poach Huawei's core scientific research personnel. Before leaving, these people stole some of Huawei's very new technologies by taking screenshots and excerpts.
It is important to know that Huawei's investment in scientific research is quite high, accounting for 20% of its annual revenue. This kind of violation of business ethics and stealing business technology is absolutely intolerable to any commercial company, including Huawei.
Zunpai Communication specializes in the research and development of WiFi chips, which is the chip used on the router in our home. Because the router is a core node of the future smart home Internet of Things, it belongs to the battleground.
This wifi chip, its research strength, which company is what level, is actually very transparent, the biggest contribution to wifi 6 chip technology is Intel and Huawei, the most advanced wifi 7 chip technology, Huawei is far ahead, its main competitor is Qualcomm, but Qualcomm in wifi7 The number of patents and technical contributions are significantly behind Huawei, they are not an order of magnitude at all.
This Zunpai communication is mainly the research and development of WIF16 chips, and also involves the research and development of wifi7 chips, so why can it be favored by so many investment institutions in a short period of time, everyone savor.
As the most technologically advanced company in this field, Huawei's first WiFi7 router was launched in December. But a few months ago, there was a mobile phone brand, he began to push his own wifi router, he didn't have this independent research and development ability, he used Qualcomm chip, and then experts found that this chip was very, very easy to use, butEveryone is also curious, how did Qualcomm suddenly be able to make such a high-level chip?I think it's incredible.
The most surprising thing here is Huawei, they noticed that there was a problem inside, and he did the two most important things: first, he reported the case as soon as possible. Second, a ruthless move was made, and when the price of this product on the market was close to 1000 yuan, he directly priced his latest product at 399 yuan. A company with leading technology, its products will definitely have a large wave of dividends, but Huawei in order to regain the market that should belong to itself, so regardless of the cost, even if it is a blood loss, it must be with the opponent to the end.
On social networking, many people associate this matter with Xiaomi, because Xiaomi is an investor in Zunpai Technology, with a shareholding ratio of more than 98%, the chip developed by Xiaomi is called "surging chip", and this company is called "Zunpai Technology". As things continued to ferment, Xiaomi quickly issued a response statement, saying that it was neither the earliest nor the largest investor, and they had invested in dozens of chip companies, which was a normal financial investment behavior. At the same time, he also said that Xiaomi attaches great importance to intellectual property rights and resolutely opposes the theft of trade secrets through illegal means.
How is this chain conducted?
Did the Zunpai steal Huawei's technology and then sell it to a foreign competitor?
Are there some other companies behind this that are still connected to Qualcomm and Qualcomm Investment?
Are there some domestic companies that use some unethical methods to profit from it?
It does seem like a coincidence, anything is possible.
What is the truth of this matter?What kind of role does Zhang Kun play in it?We are waiting for the public security department to uncover the mystery!