Tsinghua-affiliated groups run three trillion-yuan companies

This year has witnessed an impressive scene — Changxin Technology landed on the Sci-Tech Innovation Board, with its market value soaring past 3 trillion yuan in one go, setting an unprecedented record in the history of A-shares; there is also Zhipu, whose stock price surged 20 times within half a year, with its market value once exceeding HK$1 trillion; almost at the same time, the A-share market value of Zhongji Xuchuang also stood at the trillion-yuan mark.

What is amazing is that these three trillion-yuan companies share the same starting point — Tsinghua University.

The Tsinghua alumni circle has always been the main force in China's venture capital circle. Not long ago, the "X-Day" Xiluhu Roadshow Club Tsinghua Alumni Electronic Information Special Session & the 1st Anniversary Event of Nanguo Tsinghua Public Welfare Roadshow was held in Nanshan, Shenzhen, gathering a large group of Tsinghua alumni with a sea of young faces.

No talents mean no industries, and no industries mean no promising future. This is a historic opportunity for cities to "change their fate", as well as a major reshuffle among cities.

This Year's Three Trillion-Yuan Companies Are All From Tsinghua Alumni Circle

Few people outside know that Zhu Yiming's entrepreneurial journey started right at Tsinghua.

He is an alumnus of the 1989 Physics Department cohort of Tsinghua University. Tsinghua University's official sources once revealed that as early as during his studies, Zhu Yiming participated in project development of many companies, which gradually made him realize that integrated circuits are the underlying core technology of the information revolution. Therefore, after graduating from Tsinghua with a master's degree, he went to the United States for further advanced studies.

It was not until 2005 that Zhu Yiming chose to return to China to start a business, and established Xinji Jiayi Microelectronics in Tsinghua University Science Park for Returned Chinese Scholars, the predecessor of GigaDevice. The rising GigaDevice successfully went public in 2016, but Zhu Yiming turned around and entered the more challenging DRAM field, which gave birth to the story of Changxin Technology.

At the same time, Cao Kanyu, his junior from the 1994 Physics Department cohort of Tsinghua, also joined the narrative of the rise of domestic storage, and took the position of CEO of Changxin Technology.

The story of Zhipu also starts from the Tsinghua campus. Time goes back to 2006, the Knowledge Engineering Laboratory (KEG Lab) of the Department of Computer Science and Technology of Tsinghua University launched the AMiner platform, which uses artificial intelligence methods to dig out the objective laws of the development of natural science or technology.

Then in 2019, in order to maximize the value of scientific research achievements, Zhipu came into being. Among the founding team, Tang Jie, a well-known professor from the Department of Computer Science and Technology of Tsinghua University, serves as the chief scientist; Zhang Peng, a Tsinghua doctor of engineering in innovation leadership, serves as CEO and general manager; Liu Debing, a Tsinghua alumnus, serves as the chairman.

Zhongji Xuchuang, which landed on the Hong Kong stock market not long ago, also has a Tsinghua connection. Liu Sheng, born in 1971, was the top scorer in science in his entire county back then, and was admitted to the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Department of Automation of Tsinghua University, which later gave birth to the legendary story of Zhongji Xuchuang.

If we take a broader view, Tsinghua students are almost all over today's scientific and technological innovation fields. Behind the intensive emergence of Tsinghua-founded startup projects, a clear signal is conveyed — the reach of hard technology investment is continuously extending forward. As Lin Haizhuo, founding partner of Tsingyuan Asia, observed, investment is continuing to move forward: many technology routes are still under exploration, while VCs have already stepped into the scientific research stage. He summarizes this phenomenon as the "scientization" of technology investment.

This scene reminds people of Chen Datong, a chip tycoon who graduated from Tsinghua, who once said gratefully: "The little achievements I have made after joining the trend of the times are inseparable from the cultivation of Tsinghua University, and even more inseparable from the tradition and spirit of Tsinghua."

Retaining Talents Means Retaining the Next Trillion-Yuan Company

Looking at the growth track of domestic trillion-yuan enterprises, it is essentially the inevitable result of cities continuously gathering and retaining high-quality talents. Cities provide talents with development platforms, living guarantees and innovation soil, and talents give back to the cities with technological breakthroughs, model innovation and industrial value, eventually incubating leading enterprises that drive the take-off of regional economy.

At present, the core of urban competition has long shifted from attracting investment to "attracting high-end talents and retaining and cultivating talents".

In the past, many cities relied on land preferences and tax subsidies to attract enterprises to settle in, which was difficult to form industrial stickiness, and enterprises were very likely to move away with the shift of policy dividends. However, talents have extremely strong rootedness, which can drive the continuous agglomeration of technology, capital and industrial resources, forming irreplaceable industrial advantages.

There is no doubt that the thickness of a city's talent reserve and the intensity of talent retention directly determine the speed of its industrial upgrading and the upper limit of its economic growth, and are also the core confidence to breed leading head enterprises.

Take Shenzhen as an example. Scientific and technological innovation has always been the underlying feature of this city, and competing for scientific and technological innovation talents is even more an important mission of Shenzhen. In the past two years, the scale of early-stage hard technology financing in Shenzhen has reached nearly 280 billion yuan, of which Tsinghua alumni-founded startup projects account for nearly 30%; in key fields such as chips, communications and autonomous driving, the financing success rate of Tsinghua-related projects is also significantly higher than the industry average.

This road from universities to industries is gradually spreading in Nanshan, Shenzhen. A set of data shows that up to now, the "X-Day" Xiluhu Roadshow Club has held 19 themed roadshows, cumulatively promoting the docking of more than 4,500 institutional times, and 58 enterprises have obtained equity financing of over 33.16 billion yuan. Among them, Cross Intelligence, which once appeared on the roadshow stage last year, recently completed a 1 billion yuan Series B financing with a valuation of over 10 billion yuan; Zero Power, a team of post-2000s Tsinghua students, completed 4 rounds of financing 18 months after its establishment, with orders exceeding 100 million yuan.

Looking around, cities across the country are striving to compete for talents. Because retaining a top talent is not just retaining one person, but retaining an innovation node, which means locking in the main body that creates wealth.

As Nanjing Qilin Venture Capital bet on Dapuwei, with floating book profit exceeding 10 billion yuan; Shaanxi state-owned capital invested heavily in Source Photonics Technology, and reaped a 100-billion-yuan company after waiting for many years; Henan state-owned capital stepped in to take over Super Fusion in the nick of time back then, contributing both funds and resources to stage the "Henan Speed"; Hangzhou had the "Six Little Dragons" in the early years, and the "New Eight Steeds" recently... Similar stories are happening continuously.

So who will be the next trillion-yuan company?

We may not know the answer, but what we can be sure of is that the next trillion-yuan company is never planned out, but jointly bred by groups of talents.

In the final analysis, all miracles are miracles created by people.

This article is from the WeChat official account "Investing" (ID: pedaily2012), written by Liu Bo, and published with authorization from 36Kr.