Hillhouse Accelerates The Layout Of Hard Technology: More Than 80 Crane Injection Chips And Automatic Driving Industry Chain Are Launched In Half A Year

AI is clearly becoming a strategic location.

At the 2021 world AI conference in Shanghai a few days ago, Zhang Lei did not appear in public, but participated in the discussion of the strategic expert advisory committee. The strategic AI projects mentioned include deep learning framework "first class technology", open source framework "ziliz" for vector search, and AI computing resource pooling software "trend technology", There are also AI chip enterprises "Horizon" and "Bi Ren technology". Hillard also judged that "the perceptual intelligence has leaped to a higher level of decision intelligence, and a large number of interdisciplinary breakthroughs are being realized.".

But artificial intelligence is just one of the clues to the current state of investment in Hillhouse. From the sales in the first half of the year, we can find that the strategic investment in hard science and technology since this year can be described as a chain layout. In June, it invested robot FAO, and laser radar company Hesai Technology (and meituan Xiaomi invested a total of 300 million US dollars); In May, hundreds of millions of leading investment in New Energy Network Star charging pile and DPU chip Xingyun Zhilian. Looking ahead, Jifei technology, Zhixing at the last minute, Guoyi quantum and Weige table belong to UAV, autopilot, quantum precision measurement and quantum computing, and low code fields.

According to the incomplete statistics of public information, Hillhouse made more than 80 moves in the field of hard science and technology in the first half of the year.

Hillhouse is good at ecological investment, and its investment in medical field has been very typical before. Now in the field of hard science and technology, Hillhead is obviously copying its best set of playing methods. Behind the scattered projects, what are the main lines for the high-tech investment?

Dismantling investment logic: grasping "big chips" and gambling on strong players

The investment in chip semiconductors of Hillhead has been very dense. Xinyaohui, xinhuazhang, horizon, tiankeheda, Xingsi semiconductor, Biren technology and Xingyun Zhilian, respectively, correspond to the IP and EDA design of the most upstream of the chip industry chain, to the automotive autopilot chip, silicon carbide power devices, and the mobile phone baseband with great difficulty, Then to general GPU and DPU.

All of these, high altitude shot, and almost all of them were leading shots.

"The snowpath is extremely long and the opportunity is extremely many" is the high strategic definition to the chip industry. The last time they said so, they invested in Dacheng biomedicine. So, is hilltop casting a net?

From a previously widely circulated internal speech on hi tech investment, there are at least two selection criteria. First, only looking at "big chips", whether CPU, GPU, or on-board power semiconductors, are subdivision tracks with huge market scale and extremely high ceiling. On this basis, Hillhouse is willing to meet its demands, whether it is large capital or over a long period of time.

For example, in August last year, Hillhead invested 2 billion pre-B rounds of financing. In the eyes of many semiconductor industry FA, Hillhead's entry at that time "has strong signal meaning". Since then, Biren has become the fastest growing super Unicorn with the largest financing scale in the industry.

In the big chip chart, the key to choose a team from a high position is to find strong people. For the chip semiconductor industry, there may be two strong standards. First, enough experience and enough influence. It can be said that it depends on whether the market standard can be converted to a certain extent. According to this dimension, Xia Lusheng of Xingsi, Zhang Wen of Bi Ren and Wang Libin of xinhuazhang are typical strong men.

Second, in the above-mentioned internal speech, high-altitude also mentioned that the team must pursue technological leadership without any distractions, which is the core competitiveness of the long snow track.

Hillhouse said that "it will not invest in technology followers". If it imitates other people's technology, even if it has achieved the first position in the subdivision industry in a short period of time, it is probably not a good match for Hillhouse.

Automatic driving focuses on scene landing

Hilltop's layout of autopilot originated from chips. As early as 2015, Zhang Lei invested in horizon in Angel round. Last month, horizon successfully produced 5 chips of journey, becoming the only intelligent chip solution provider covering all scenes from L2 to L4 in the industry.

Yu Kai, founder of horizon, recalled that the company was not favored by the industry at the beginning of its establishment. The technology and capital barriers brought by AI and chips "deterred most investors.". But Zhang Lei not only started to support the angel round, but also encouraged Yu Kai: "entrepreneurs should enjoy a period of time when they are not understood and others regard you as a 'fool'. This is the time to let go."

At the beginning of this year, Hillhead, Wuyuan and today capital led the investment in horizon's C7 round of financing again.

In addition to the on-board chip, there are many key points in the development and commercialization of automatic driving. According to previous media reports, Hillhouse related investors have told the media: "Hillhouse's investment in automatic driving is first carried out around the most core nodes in the industrial chain, including autopilot system, autopilot chip, lidar with the core sensor, and autopilot computing platform. Find the most critical links, and then select the strongest team in the subdivision direction to support them to develop relevant directions. "

Taking the automatic driving system as an example, in the process of integrating hardware and software, a perfect "Windows system" is needed, which is also the most important underlying technology besides chips. In this link, Hillhead and Foxconn invested in autocore.ai. The company has built the first generation of automatic driving open development platform with tier IV of Japan, and has established deep cooperation with global head manufacturers in various fields of chips, Tier1 and OEM, and has completed many project deliveries.

As a necessary sensing hardware for automatic driving, lidar is more favored by capital. The IPO of Hesai technology terminated in March, but it still couldn't stop the enthusiasm of investment institutions. In June, it completed the d-round financing of more than 300 million US dollars, and the leading investor was at a high position.

In the first half of the year, we can also find that Hillhead has invested heavily in a number of L1-L3 automatic driving scheme service providers. The basis for supporting their investment is that "at present, the landing speed of automatic driving, especially L1-L3, is far beyond expectation. Therefore, in the fields of logistics and distribution, delivery of meals, cleaning, agriculture and other fields, automatic driving will usher in rapid commercial progress".

The small magic box, a L3 product of Hillhead's investment, has been put into the market and has become the supplier of logistics unmanned vehicles for many large factories; Jifei technology can also be counted as one. Its main business such as UAV and auxiliary driving is mainly used in farmland scene. In addition, the investors in Hongjing Zhijia's round a financing of nearly 100 million yuan also include Hillhead, which is also one of the few full stack automatic driving service providers in the industry with complete self-study ability of software and hardware, with products covering more than L1-L4 levels.

Why believe that hard technology will usher in a tipping point?

Many external impressions of Hillhouse still remain in the investment of Tencent, Jingdong, holding Baili, and the ecological layout of medical treatment. However, if the number of investment portfolio is high in recent three years, we can find that its investment in hard technology enterprises is occupying an increasingly high proportion. In fact, technology has always been a main line of strategic investment.

At the beginning of 2021, Hillhead venture capital announced that it has invested more than 200 projects in one year, with technology driven companies accounting for 78%, including more than 80 hard technology investments.

But the figure of 80 this year, it took hillock half of its time to break.

Chips, autonomous driving, robotics, artificial intelligence are all hot directions, and to some extent, they are the contested areas of big funds. Zhang Lei stressed that it is strange to be upright. Is there any "strange" in the high-tech investment?

The quantum may be one. On more than one occasion, Hillhead has mentioned a company called Guoyi quantum, which uses quantum precision measurement and quantum computing to cut the point of domestic high-end instruments in the "neck".

There should also be basic software. According to a speech delivered by a partner of Hillhouse venture capital in Beijing Zhiyuan conference, Hillhead has systematically arranged a large number of early companies in "it, DT, AI, computing power and storage, deep learning framework, security and operation and maintenance, open source and other fields". For example, in terms of open source mentioned in it, Hillard has invested in ziliz, EMQ Yingyun technology, perfma, first-class technology and other companies.

"Infra projects are now given priority to Hillhouse," said a senior FA in to B industry. Many organizations in this field are making efforts, but the most systematic way to play is from a high position“ Most organizations look at infra with only one or two people and at most one small team, but the team in this direction is relatively large. So they didn't do it in a dotted way. There must be a guidebook. You can see that they are trying to layout step by step. "

In the internal speech mentioned above, Hillard made it clear that "it is optimistic about the four major subdivided competitions in the field of science and technology in the next two to five years, including semiconductors, cutting-edge technologies, new energy and intelligent hardware", and called hard technology "a historic structural investment window period".

There are many factors. Influenced by the environment, the accelerated return of overseas hard technology talents is a key indicator. They greatly supplement the technical strength of Chinese companies in a short period of time. Hillhead believes that hard technology entrepreneurship is in the process of rapid evolution of high demand, high assistance, high barriers and high-level teams, which is the premise of its bet on the technology track - these factors ensure that enterprises can find a balance between technology and business while promoting industrial progress.

Where does the "technological persistence" come from? In May this year, Zhang Lei mentioned in an interview that "Hillhead has seen great opportunities brought about by the change of science and technology paradigm, including infrastructure software, artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, life science, immune gene, precision therapy, as well as new materials, environmental science, carbon neutral, advanced manufacturing, etc., which can be said to be the whole scientific innovation, The explosion of new species of scientific and technological innovation ".

This can not help but think of the investment of Hillhead in Baiji. In 2014, Hillhead invested in a round of Baiji Shenzhou, followed by 8 consecutive rounds of notes. When it first invested, few believed that China could make its own innovative medicine. But the investment requirement of Hillhouse is to find something that will exert force and make great changes in the next five to 10 years before the consensus occurs.

At present, from the perspective of high-tech intensive efforts on hard science and technology, this should be the next "innovative medicine type opportunity" that it is optimistic about.

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