Chapter 308： ARM

After finishing the matter in Germany, Bao Zixuan went directly to England. This time, he has a reason to go. With the rapid development of computers, the development of chips has been accelerated, and Bao Zixuan has provided a lot of help in the middle, but Heiyun only occupies a small part of the share; and this part of the share is still Low-end chips such as memory can be said to have no achievements in cpu.

Now Black Cloud uses chips from Motorola and Intel, and its own chip design capabilities are very weak. Not only is there no desire to expand development, but there is no top engineer in this area.

The purpose of Bao Zixuan's visit to the UK this time is to convince a newly established chip company in the UK to accept his own investment, and that it is the kind that allows him to control.

On December 5, 1978, physicist Herman Hauser and engineer Chris Curry founded the CPU company in Cambridge, England, whose main business was to supply electronic equipment to the local market. In 1979, the CPU company changed its name to the company.

At first, the company intended to use Motorola's 16-bit chip, but found it too slow and too expensive. "A machine that costs £500 can't use a CPU that costs £100!" They turned to Intel and asked for the design data of the 80286 chip, but they were rejected, so they were forced to develop their own.

In 1985, Roger Wilson and Steve Furber designed their own first-generation 32-bit, 6MHz processor,

It is used to make a computer with RISC instruction set, referred to as ARM (RISCMachine). This is where the name ARM comes from.

The full name of RISC is "reduced set computer" (reduced set computer). The instructions it supports are relatively simple, so it has low power consumption and low price, and is especially suitable for mobile devices. A typical early device using ARM chips was Apple's Newton PDA.

In the late 1980s, ARM quickly developed desktop products that formed the basis of computer education in the UK.

On November 27, 1990, the company was officially reorganized into ARM Computer Corporation. Apple invested 1.5 million pounds, chip maker VLSI invested 250,000 pounds, and itself invested 1.5 million pounds in intellectual property and 12 engineers. The company's office location is very simple, it is a barn.

In the 1990s, ARM 32-bit embedded RISC (Reduced Set Computer) processors expanded to the world, occupying a leading position in the field of low-power, low-cost and high-performance embedded system applications. ARM neither manufactures nor sells chips, it only sells licenses for chip technology.

At present, this company is still in the start-up stage, and Bao Zixuan just wants to start before others pay attention to him. And not in the name of Heiyun, but in his own private name to invest. Although the effect is the same, so that the black cloud will not be particularly large, although it is already large, but it can be reduced by a corresponding reduction!

When Bao Zixuan came to Cambridge, he saw the two founders of the company. Herman Hauser and Chris Curry are also very puzzled, how the Black Cloud Group will find them, after all, this is the most popular company in recent years. And they are still a small company that cannot be smaller, and the strength of the two companies is completely unequal.

Now, seeing Bao Zixuan, the founder of Black Cloud, come over in person, it confuses them even more. After all, not everyone can let this young boss come forward in person, at least they don't think their own strength can reach it.

Hermann-Hauser said excitedly, "I don't know what Mr. Bao is looking for from me."

If Bao Zixuan is just an entrepreneur and still doesn't get such high respect, he still has the status of a Turing Award winner. As long as those who are engaged in the computer industry do not know the importance of this award, they cannot but be excited.

Bao Zixuan: "It seems that Mr. Hauser is an impatient person, so I will not go around in circles. I want to invest in the company. I recognize your strength very much, and I am very optimistic about the future of this company."

Hermann-Hauser: "But we are developing very well now, and if Mr. Bao becomes a shareholder in this company, we can say that we basically won't have many shares."

Bao Zixuan: "Then how to look at this issue, the resources you will get after I become a shareholder will be unimaginable. And the company's market value is now 1 million pounds, if you develop according to your own, it may reach 10 million pounds. But after I joined the company The market value of the company will reach 100 million pounds or 1 billion pounds. Although your shares are less, the value of the shares in your hands has increased. Also, I am only doing investment and will not participate in the management of the company. The management of the company is still Leave it to you, you can develop according to your own ideas."

Chris Curry said: "I don't know what Mr. Bao's valuation of the company is and how many shares he hopes to get."

Bao Zixuan: "You decide the market value of the company. I don't like investing in companies. I like investors more often, and only in this way can I be invincible. Companies can be created at any time, but talent takes ten or decades. , It takes hundreds of years to cultivate one. To take a long-term perspective, my interest in the company is more from the fact that the two are still in this company. "

Hearing that Bao Zixuan valued them so much, both of them were overjoyed. In fact, when they first established the company, it was more because of interest, but now that they have developed to this stage, if they cannot make profits, their lives will be affected.

For this company, they have invested a considerable amount of their savings, and they have also taken out a loan from the bank. Now that Bao Zixuan is willing to invest in their company, Chris Curry, an engineer, can say that the current situation is quite difficult. This is why he is so excited to hope that Bao Zixuan will come to invest, and he also asked how much the company is worth.

Hermann-Hauser: "There were several investment institutions who wanted to buy shares in our company before, but they all looked at the company's market value relatively low. And there was some conflict with our philosophy in terms of operation, so we didn't negotiate."

"Now that Mr. Bao can give up management rights, we are of course more interested, but we hope that the valuation of the company is 5 million pounds."

When I heard Jorge Hauser say that Bao Zixuan wanted to laugh In my past life, this company could be worth so much money in 1990. It depends on whether I am young or stupid and easy to bully. It's going to be such a high price. But at the same time, he also understands that this price is really not expensive in the future. In the future, this company will be the only chip giant that can compete with Intel in the United States.

Bao Zixuan: "I'm not bad for this amount of money, but don't you think this valuation is too expensive! And can you guarantee that my investment is worth it!"

Jorge Hauser: "Mr. Bao seems to have never missed the companies and industries that he is optimistic about. This is where our confidence lies. And if I reveal the rumor that you came to negotiate with us, I think many venture capital firms will recognize this. price."

Indeed, Bao Zixuan's current trend has become a benchmark in some industries. This was all due to his fame. Now that he saw that the two had nothing to fear, he knew that it would really backfire if he came to negotiate.

In the future, I still have to listen to the opinions of professionals, and I can't just go ahead like this. So he smiled and said, "You are not afraid of me setting up a company next to you. It's not that I don't have technology, I just don't have the time and energy to manage these things."

Jorge Hauser: "You do have technology and strength. But your time and energy will not be wasted on a small company, and you will not lose money on our investment."

Bao Zixuan: "Okay! According to your valuation, there's really no need to worry about this money."

In the end, Bao Zixuan invested 3.5 million pounds to occupy 70% of the company's shares. As for the rest, it depends on how the founder shareholders and other staff are distributed.

But Bao Zixuan knew that he still had to develop slowly, and he couldn't be too hasty. Now, as long as the chip framework agreement is established, the mass production is left to the future!