Investor.com" Jordan.
In four years, it has grown rapidly into a unique leader in the domestic EDA industry, Suzhou Fuhu Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Fuhu Technology") has never positioned itself as a "follower", in the company's recent development process, it has always kept an eye on EDA's cutting-edge technological innovation, and has set up its own banner in the contentious Chinese EDA market.
EDA, the full name of electronic design automation, that is, electronic design automation. EDA is a key tool for chip design and production. It is vividly known as the "mother of chips", and it is also a key link in the upstream of the semiconductor industry that is "stuck".
Founded in 2019, Fuhu Technology released the anasage system, the first and self-developed analog chip automation design software in China, in July 2022, and the anasage-porting application synchronized with international first-tier manufacturers in October 2023. This innovation fills a number of technical gaps in domestic EDA software, and realizes the automation and intelligence of module-level analog chip design. In other words, as early as 4 years ago, Fuhu was already pondering the application of AI artificial intelligence in the field of EDA. So, what is the core driving force that drives Fuhu Technology to move forward?
Recently, "Investor.com" interviewed Lan Bijian, chairman of Fuhu Technology, to gain an in-depth understanding of how she led the team to open up greater imagination space with innovative power on top of technological advantages.
Lan Bijian, chairman of Fuhu Technology.
"I'm doing something creative and leading".
In terms of positioning, the core function of EDA is to provide automated-assisted design capabilities for chip design and production. It integrates many cutting-edge technologies, such as graphics, computational mathematics, microelectronics, topological logic, materials science, and artificial intelligence, and has a very high industry threshold. Up to now, EDA has become one of the most upstream, high-end and core industries in the chip industry chain.
From the perspective of the industry pattern, the EDA market shows a high degree of concentration. With a global market share of nearly 80%, the three global giants Synopsys, Cadence, and Mentor Graphic are among the first echelons with significant leading advantages. The difference between the different echelons of EDA enterprises is mainly to provide the integrity of the whole process, among the Chinese enterprises, except for Huada Jiutian (301269SZ) is in addition to the second echelon, and is mostly located in the third echelon.
Lan Bijian keenly noticed that at present, many participants in the domestic EDA market mainly focus on domestic substitution business, that is, remake a similar product based on the cognition of existing products, break the foreign monopoly, and avoid being stuck. However, this practice is easy to fall into the misunderstanding of one-to-one benchmarking with the original product, once the product is inconsistent with the original product or slightly defective, it will be criticized by users and not recognized by the market.
Based on this, Fuhu Technology has chosen a different path. While many peers are still trying to catch up with existing products, the young Fuhu Technology has chosen to define the next generation of products, using artificial intelligence to automate the whole process of analog chip design. This move is on the same starting line as the DARPA electronics revival plan in the United States, and it is unique among domestic EDA companies.
"Our goal is not just to simply replace existing products, but to create a whole new field," said Lamb. Through the introduction of leading technologies such as deep learning Xi, heuristics, and GPU hardware acceleration, we have successfully launched the new Anasage system. This system is an intelligent engine similar to ChatGPT, which can minimize the repetitive work of engineers, greatly shorten the working time of manual design, and improve work efficiency. ”
She further explains: "The Anasage system, also known as the 'Simulation Master', is currently only 1Version 0. Our goal is for machines to do all the repetitive and dirty work, so that engineers can focus more on creative planning and decision-making to maximize productivity. For example, if a company used to need 100 designers to do the job, now with our software, it only needs 20 designers to do the same task. This not only realizes the optimization and replacement of human resources, but also improves work efficiency and design quality. ”
In addition to making breakthroughs in the domestic market, Fuhu Technology's products also have international competitive advantages at a certain level. "The product features we are promoting are being released at the same time as the products launched by EDA's international first-tier manufacturer, CADIUM. These are brand new and have nothing else on the market before. We're still in the exploratory phase, so once we launch this kind of product, user acceptance will be relatively easier. ”
The reason why Fuhu Technology has been able to quickly emerge in the EDA field is inseparable from the fact that it has a strong and diverse team behind it.
Lan Bijian has a background in physics and electronics from Fudan University, and has worked in internationally renowned semiconductor and EDA companies, with rich professional knowledge and practical experience. In addition, the team of Fulhoo Technology has also gathered a group of experts in the field of algorithms and AI, and the core members of the relevant team have been engaged in EDA and related technology research and development work in the above-mentioned overseas three giants, as well as Microsoft and Huawei HiSilicon. It is these cutting-edge talents in the industry who continue to promote the development and innovation of Fuhu Technology in the field of EDA.
Talking about the team, Lan Bijian said, "None of the core personnel who chose to join our company left halfway. I think that's the greatest asset for our company. When our founding team came together, we wanted to realize the vision of AI automation together. As long as the value and meaning of this vision remains, we will continue to do so. ”
Become ChatGPT in the EDA field
In terms of industry size, in the EDA sector, China's market share has been growing steadily, despite being relatively small globally. In 2020, the size of China's EDA market will be about 93100 million yuan. In the next few years, due to the impact of Sino-US friction and the new crown epidemic, it has declined slightly but is still developing, and the market size of China's EDA industry in Shanghai and Hong Kong will reach 205 in 2025600 million yuan. However, this does not include the explosion of new demand brought about by the introduction of AI into the industry.
When it is estimated that the business value of AI can be billions, it is applied to all aspects of life beyond people's imagination, easily breaking through the market size of 10 billionWhen everyone thinks that AI is still out of reach in people's lives, it has been iterating several times a year, constantly compressing the time limit for AI to approach and replace people from 20 years to 10, 5, and 3 years. Just as OpenAI's investors could not foresee that ChatGPT technology could reach hundreds of billions a year after commercialization, it is also extremely challenging to develop the speed and value of AI-based next-generation EDA technology.
Thanks to the popularity of ChatGPT technology, now everyone will not question the value of AI. However, a few years ago, when Fuhu Technology had just started financing, it was not easy for such an investment institution at that time to accurately assess the investment value of such a company committed to 'equipping EDA with AI wings'. The products developed by Fuhu Technology are unique and innovative, and there is no precedent to follow, and it cannot be benchmarked and evaluated through models. Therefore, at that time, investors who could accurately predict the future development trend of the industry and dared to 'bet' became the most trusted close partners of Fuhu Technology on the road to future growth. Lan Bijian said.
Fortunately, at the beginning of its establishment, Fuhu Technology has won the favor and support of many well-known enterprises and investment institutions such as Suzhou Mintou, MediaTek, Houyang Investment, and Jizi Investment. These investors have played an important role in driving the company's rapid growth. Lan Bijian said frankly that without the deep understanding of the industry by these early shareholders and their recognition of the value of Fuhu's investment, the company would not have achieved today's results.
The two industries, EDA and AI, are very similar in themselves, and both have extremely high barriers, among which the investment in capital is particularly prominent. Taking EDA giants Synopsys and Cadence as examples, the R&D expenses of the two companies in 2021 were as high as 15$100 million and 11300 million US dollars, and the R&D expense ratio remains at about 35% and 40% all year round. This industry needs to continue to invest huge amounts of money and drive R&D innovation to maintain its leading position in the industry. Once the first-mover advantage is obtained and the leading position in the industry is occupied, the return on investment obtained is difficult to replicate. Fuhu Technology is undoubtedly at the forefront of the next generation of AI-based EDA.
When asked about his expectations for the next 10 years, Lan Bijian hopes that Fuhu Technology's products and technologies can become products that occupy an important position in the field of artificial intelligence like GPT and are widely used, bringing more convenience and innovation to human beings. "Maybe we don't have to wait a decade, just as artificial intelligence has penetrated into our lives and work, and it is quietly changing everything. ”
When we talk about this topic, we will inevitably touch on the interaction between human beings and the development of science and technology. Just as some customers have worried about whether Fuhu Technology's products will completely replace the role of engineers.
In this regard, Lan Bijian believes that artificial intelligence performs well in terms of execution and knowledge, but there are still great limitations in creativity and decision-making, which cannot replace manpower. We should see the convenience and value that machines bring to people, rather than fear that machines will replace people. She firmly believes that the development of artificial intelligence should be to assist human beings, liberate human beings from complicated mechanical repetitive manual labor, and allow human beings to do more valuable creative things more freely, rather than replace human beings. Just like the development process of EDA itself, the experience of the past few decades has proved that automated design software has not replaced the position of chip design engineers, on the contrary, it has greatly promoted the development of the entire IC industry chain, making the work of engineers easier and more comfortable, more valuable, and more people can work in this industry.
For the future of Fuhu Technology, Lan Bijian believes that in the current market environment, maintaining the original intention and concentration is a necessary condition for crossing the cycle. Just like the company name "foohu"**—stay foolish, stay hungry". (Produced by Thinking Finance).