From the "double carbon" wave, to semiconductor and SaaS "cold winter", what is the current technology investment?| Jiazi Gravity

Except the road of industrial upgrading in China.

Author | Li Xianhuan, Fan Wenjing, Zhou Xiaoli, Mu Nan, Wu Jingjing

Edit | Liu Jingfeng

On July 27th, 2022 Jiazi Gravity X Technology Industry Investment Summit, hosted by the China Science and Technology Industry Think Tank Jiazi -year, was successfully held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Tongying Center, Sanlitun, Beijing. Nearly 40 investment institutions such as Shenzhen Venture Capital, Dachen Caizhi, Fosun, Lenovo Venture Capital, Huarden International, and Source Capital Capital, as special guests, discussed the investment industry investment through on -site and online connection.

For the focus of investment this year, the summit specially set up a round table forum in the five major fields of "dual -carbon" new energy, semiconductor, intelligent manufacturing, data intelligence, and SaaS, and discussed the hot topics of their respective industries.

The current technology investment industry is showing a multi -faceted map: some track is in the air outlet, the hotness, such as new energy and intelligent manufacturing; Fields; or new changes appear on the "old" track, such as quantum computing and light computing under data intelligence. Behind the seemingly inconsistency is that China is taking the shortest time to quickly complete the development of the scientific and technological industry upgrade of the developed countries for hundreds of years.

In the process, the difficulties encountered by investors and entrepreneurs will become more and more complicated. It tests not only technical capabilities and application thinking, but also awareness and patience to the industry.

1. "Double Carbon" Opportunities: Grasp the three key points of new energy investment

Since 2020, "dual carbon" has been active in investment and industry as a hot vocabulary, and this year's performance is particularly.

"In recent months, the valuation adjustment of hard technology companies is very large, but the new energy track has not been affected. (Capital) firepower is also concentrated in this industry, which is very high." Ketzi Gravity X New Energy Investment Roundtable Forum.

After all people are sought after, it is inevitable to invest over heat. Looking at the new energy vehicle track, the company's investigation data shows that the number of financing incidents of new energy vehicle track in 2021 was the largest number of over the years, with a total of 239, and the total amount of disclosure reached 363.9 billion yuan, an increase of 181.66%year -on -year, a record high. It can be compared that the total annual financing disclosure of the new energy vehicle track in 2020 has just exceeded 100 billion yuan.

Excessive production capacity with the investment is overcapacity.

Many years ago, the Chinese photovoltaic market has not yet matured, and many photovoltaic companies fully rely on government photovoltaic subsidies. After listing in the United States, they fall into the bottleneck of overcapacity. However, the excess production capacity of this round of "dual carbon" is the essence of the previous round of essence is that the domestic optoelectronic, lithium battery, and wind energy industry chain have been very mature. In addition, the outbreak of downstream demand has caused the upstream capacity to be scarce and the capacity of the inverted production capacity expands.

Therefore, to some extent, this overcapacity is an inevitable trend, and at this time, investors need to pay attention to what kind of enterprises can better survive during the period of overcapacity and intensified competition.

From left to right: Li Yishi, the founding partner of Kaitian Capital, Cai Wei, a partner of Light Speed, Gan Lin, the head of Guoshou Equity Technology Investment, Wu Fan, Managing Director of Source Capital Capital Bin (online)

At present, from the perspective of technical capabilities, China's hardware, wind power, photovoltaic and other new energy technologies are quite powerful. This is reflected in the domestic and foreign investment markets: China -US investment has occurred "one soft, one hard", "one more, one less". American investors pay more attention to software, and pay less attention to hardware and new energy technology; domestic LP has gradually realized that new energy technology brings great opportunities to China.

However, China's technological advantages are more reflected in industrial landing. For example, the optimization process and cost control after technology introduction, continuous iteration of technology until large -scale mass production, opening up domestic and foreign markets, which are indelible contributions of Chinese entrepreneurs.

However, in the research and utilization of "carbon" itself and the extension of original technology, China is still behind developed countries such as the United States and Japan, such as the exploration of solid -state batteries. At the same time, in today's mature lithium battery and photovoltaic technology, important raw materials and core equipment on the upstream part of the upstream need to be imported from abroad.

In general, China's new energy industry has formed a certain global influence, and many foreign capital also hopes to carry out the new energy industry layout in the Chinese market. A expert once said, "The current lithium battery is oil twenty years ago." At this moment, China's new energy industry is in the critical period of stepping on the throttle--

First of all, the manufacturing industry itself has two cores: "cost" and "quality". In the future, China's new energy industry will need to return to the essence of manufacturing, and drive the development of the industry with scientific and technological innovation and technology innovation.

"In China's new energy and new energy vehicle industries, they are among the top ten global waves. Enterprises that provide core products and continue to create the value of industrial chain development are companies with investment value and high return value." Source code. Wu Fan, Managing Director of Capital, said.

Secondly, all aspects of the new energy industry chain are penetrating each other. There is a trend of groups. Pure market -oriented investment institutions need to help upstream, middle and downstream investors to do a good job of industrial synergy.

It is not easy to do this. The new energy industry covers a large and wide range of fields, and there are many technical routes. Which path can win, it takes time to communicate in the industry and communicate with the best companies and experts upstream and downstream. Puzzle of industrial cognition. In this way, you can discover new opportunities for value depression.

Third, overseas markets are full of imagination. Leading companies such as Foxconn and Mercedes -Benz will deploy the entire industrial chain and the global market. Investment institutions can get closer to companies with strong foreign technology and strong extension capabilities, absorb and digest their core technologies, and then nurture their investment companies.

In the future, the development of the new energy industry requires investors, enterprises and the entire industrial chain to work hard to continue to achieve scale through technology and product innovation, expand scale, reduce costs, iterate traditional technologies, and actively participate in global competition -this may be new energy sources. The benign way of industrial development.

2. Semiconductor investment: Under the cycle, the industry enters the squeeze foam moment

Unlike the hotness of the "double carbon" market, this year's semiconductor investment seems to have encountered a "cold wave". At the beginning of the year, the chip company listed on the science and technology board frequently broke. Among the six chip companies listed in January, five companies, Guoxin Technology, Tianyue Advanced, Cijie Technology, Xiyuwei, Zhenbi Technology, were broken on the first day. One.

In the semiconductor investment round table forums of Jiazi Gravity X, Zhang Ding Capital Founding Partner Zhang relaxed that although the secondary market has been cold, the valuation of the first -level market projects has not fallen, some seals and materials projects, income and income and income and income and income and income and income The profit is not ideal, but the valuation has reached 2 billion yuan and 5 billion yuan. At this time, the problem faced by the investment institution is that it cannot be started- "We calculated that there is no profit space between many projects between the first and secondary markets, and it is difficult to invest." Zhang Chi said.

From left to right: Wang Zhenxiang, general manager of the Executive Directors of Innovation Workshop, Wang Shaodi, founder of Zhicun Technology, Yang Yongcheng, Feng Rui Capital Partner, Zhang Chi, founding partner of Xinding Capital ), He Li Capital Partner Tang Zhihua (Online)

According to the judgment of the guests, there are many reasons for this "cold".

Semiconductor is a periodic fluctuation industry, which is always in the dynamic imbalance of supply and demand. The length of the cycle of different types of chips depends on the time and terminal sales of chip development and production, generally 4-5 years.

Specifically, external factors are the tight production capacity caused by the epidemic, which has risen the chip price. During the post -epidemic period, the production capacity was relatively sufficient, and the excessive stocking of each link earlier caused the chip to fall and ushered in a periodic cold wave.

The internal factors have been that the demand for the explosive growth of chips in the past 20 years has become the stock market, such as mobile phones and PC chips. Although it is constantly iterating, the incremental increase is limited. And it is difficult to have similar technological innovation to the future, and it can create such huge needs.

Most practitioners did not show a negative attitude because of this. After all, the semiconductor industry has been sitting on the "cold bench" for too many years. Dormation is the norm, and hotness is a different state. Rather than saying "the cold wave is coming", it is better to say that this is the squeeze foam after the bubble period, allowing the industry to return to the normal track.

For market -oriented companies, under the lack of core tide and bubble, "production capacity is king" is a more favorable business tendency. After returning to normal, Wang Shaodi, the founder of Zhicun Technology, believes that "hot money and resources will no longer flow to those areas with high technical content but are out of stock. Investment tends to be rational, and resources can be concentrated in the head with technical barriers." Let hard technology companies focus on research and development and technological innovation, thereby promoting the development of the entire industry.

For investors, although the core is missing some of the "buffer space" to the voting semiconductor enterprise, the essence of hard technology entrepreneurship is technology and business. Therefore Destiny to make investment judgments, it is better to observe the ability of enterprises to have strategies and business philosophy when facing the test.

In the short term, the semiconductor industry is full of cyclical fluctuations, but in the long run, under the influence of geopolitics and domestic alternatives, the semiconductor industry is still a field of attention.

Looking upstream, there is more room for development and exploration in the market. Production, manufacturing, and equipment have some stuck necks waiting for technical breakthroughs, such as lithography machines, lithography, etching equipment, ion injection equipment, etc. There are also many companies in the material side, such as third -generation semiconductors, large silicon wafers, special gas, etc.

In the application end, from intelligent manufacturing, new energy vehicles, to AR/VR, 5G and other fields, it will become the main pushing factor of the chip industry in the next 5-10 years. At the same time, the update iteration of mobile phones, PCs, and server chip technology in the stock market is also worthy of continuing attention, including AI chips, CPU, GPU, DPU, NPU, optical chip, etc.

3. The next opportunity for intelligent manufacturing: new scene, new scene to sea

Intelligent manufacturing is not only one of the leading factors in the future chip industry, but also the core part of China's industry upgrade.

With the strong support of national policies, the scale of the output value of China's intelligent manufacturing industry has risen year by year. In 2020, the output value of my country's intelligent manufacturing industry was about 255.6 billion yuan, an increase of 18.85%year -on -year. The capital heat of the industry has also continued to rise. Data from Tianyan Check shows that in the first half of this year, the advanced manufacturing industry ranked first in the number of investment and financing of various industries with 667 projects, with an average of 111 investment financing incidents.

Of course, the industry is hot, but for investors, it needs more keen eyes to identify real problems. Guojia and executive partner Chen Hongwu talked about the Intelligent Manufacturing Roundtable Forum, and China's industrial output value accounted for 30%of the world, close to the United States, Japan, and Germany. Yes, the application end is done well, but the core information system and industrial foundation are based on foreign technology. This is also a subject that needs to be overcome for a long time in the future. "Behind the big topic, intelligent manufacturing is present The depth transformation of all walks of life. For investors in this field, not only need to grasp the trend of the trend, but also pay attention to the growth possibility of technology brought about by long -term. Chen Yanran, the managing director of the Capital Capital, believes that due to the different processes of different industries, it is important to distinguish the opportunity of automation and intelligentization of the segments, which is very important for investment institutions. It is also related to the demand for production line automation transformation.

In his opinion, the scale of the current intelligent manufacturing no longer includes not only the number of industrial scale, but also the digital change capabilities caused by the scenes caused by each new tool, as well as the customer's investment and willingness.

From left to right: Shi Yan, Managing Director CCV Director of CCV, Chen Yanran, Managing Director of Capital Capital, Chen Hongwu, Executive Partner, President of Dachen Cai Zhi Zhou Jun, general manager of North China Headquarters

In addition to appearing in some subdivided scenarios, opportunities also appear in some possibilities brought about by business model innovation. Assistant President of Dachen Cai Zhi believes: "Unlike the investment of the Internet, it is difficult for manufacturing to use capital to build barriers in the short term. The opportunity emerging in the process lies in the business model of hard technology companies -who sells to? What is the pricing power? What is the business model? "

The answer is not the bigger the plate of the enterprise, and it does not mean that only the original business boundary. This is a new challenge that needs to be explored step by step in the scene.

This has made new challenges for investors who were better at measuring opportunities.

Zhou Jun, the general manager of Shenzhen Investment, the general manager of the North China Headquarters, is: "In the confirmed opportunity, what time to choose, what valuation investment, and which team is voted in the subdivided field. If the judgment of these issues is judged The deviation may not be able to make money, and even make the investment behavior not match the fund attributes. "He believes that this not only tests the professionalism of the institutional team, but also is closely related to the nature of the fund itself and the cognition of the industry. "For example, a 5 -year cycle fund will have a problem with this track."

This is a complex proposition, with clear directions but challenges.

On the one hand, with the decrease in new opportunities, investment institutions also need to be more cautious and detailed to evaluate specific opportunities, and at the same time distinguish the industrial qualitative changes behind each opportunity. "It is necessary to find an enterprise that really brings technological innovation. For example, a chip project we used to see, the differentiated logic is low cost, which is cheaper than a domestic competitor product. The replacement of import substitutions is made, and the investment value is relatively limited, and it is not our priority at the moment. "Guoke Jia and executive partner Chen Hongwu talked.

On the other hand, the application development of new scenes and going to sea are also ushered in new industrial opportunities.

Zhou Jun, general manager of Shenzhen Investment Decant North China Headquarters, believes that the opportunity of intelligent manufacturing in the direction of the sea comes faster: "Relying on various innovative intelligent manufacturing projects in China, whether it is software, hardware or hardware, if the team is enough Excellent, going to sea early, it is expected to stand on the global stage faster and become an international company. "

This is also the opportunity for new capacity of Da Chencai's assistant President Wu Xi: Because of the large -scale discrete production, process production, and precision processing of the previous large -scale abroad, in the future, in the future The digital factory to go to sea is a huge opportunity for China. "

This road from domestic stretching to the international market requires companies, investors and every scene manufacturer to come together.

4. Saas will go to the foam, and a large number of market integration will appear in the next three years

When it comes to intelligent manufacturing, I have to mention another track of this corporate service market this year -SaaS.

In the past six months, the valuation adjustment of the secondary market technology SaaS has greatly affected the first market. Since November last year, more than 60%of companies have fallen to the level before the epidemic. Zoom, Shopify, SNOWFLAKE and other stars SaaS's market value, the highest point of the highest point drop by more than 70%.

In 2021, the SaaS company on the head has ushered in a significant increase, and once pushed the valuation water level of the SaaS industry to a higher point. But since 2022, the stock price of many SaaS listed companies has fallen sharply, and some even have fallen to half of the market value. Recently, Shopify announced in an internal memorandum that the company will lay off 10%of the layoffs, involving 1,000 employees. The main reason is that the business growth is not as strong as expected.

When SaaS companies have fallen in valuation and their business slows down, how do I think of SaaS's market cold?

At the SaaS investment round table forum, most investors did not have pessimism, but instead believed that companies with solid business will continue to be favored by capital, and they are still optimistic in the long run. From left to right:: Jiang Yujie, a partner of the management of Nobita Venture Capital, Han Yi, executive director of Yunqi Capital, CEO Lanci, the founder of Dabitong, Liu Chen, and the general manager of the founder and the general manager of the high service department Capital partner Xu Yiyang and Zhenge Fund partner Yin Le

The founder of the decibels of decibels mentioned that the main reason for this kind of cold is that the PS multiple of the American SaaS company has an exaggerated increase in the previous two years. " Times, an average of about eight times, so the decline in the valuation of the American SaaS company is actually a normal state of returning to the previous years. "At the same time, affected by global valuation, China's valuation has also reduced the valuation a lot accordingly.

Regarding the current situation of SaaS, Langshi said: "Short -term cautious, but long -term optimism, especially optimistic about the sub -track of Chinese enterprises. For the reason, the infrastructure of Chinese companies is still early, regardless of clouds, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, OA, Oa It is still IaaS, PaaS, SaaS and other infrastructure in the early days and have a lot of room for development. Therefore, China's SaaS environment cannot be fully compared with the United States. From the perspective of enterprise development, he believes that solution is "cultivating internal skills and doing time to do time. friend".

Due to the different environment in China and the United States, until now, compared with the United States, Chinese SaaS companies have a large gap in the quantity, quality and valuation, which requires Chinese SaaS companies to find a way more in line with national conditions.

Yin Le, a partner of Zhenge Fund, said that there is a huge gap between the China and the United States and the market. In the final analysis, it is that the process of the past few hundred years of reform and opening up in China has gone through the United States for the past few hundred years. The digitalization of enterprises in different industries is completely different. Based on the current market situation in China, there may be a number of companies that serve large companies in the future, and a large number of SaaS companies that serve SMEs. At the same time, many small factories also have an urgent improvement efficiency and the needs of rapid response to market changes. These Small and medium -sized enterprises will gather a large volume.

Under the challenge of SaaS's cold challenge this year, it is important to maintain a peaceful mindset and adjust organizational and structure. In the past, it may be able to grow rapidly by capital, but in the clearing stage of the bubble, the real values ​​of valuation will be redefined next, which will have higher requirements for products, markets, and customers.

To this end, Liu Chen, the co -founder and general manager of the high service department, said that this period of time is also a stage of a big waves and sand, which is a very suitable time for cultivating internal skills.

In the economic downturn, in the face of SaaS's valuation pressure, enterprises do a good job of cash flow control, and it is important to survive. Jiang Yujie, a partner of Xintian Venture Capital, said that the company with abundant cash flow will have very large market opportunities in the next two to three years. China's current market environment will definitely have a large number of market integration in the next 2 to 3 years. Cash reserve companies can quickly stand out to reach a very large scale.

In the final analysis, SaaS is talking about growth and retention. The product should let customers see value, so they are willing to pay for it. If you use a longer window to look at SaaS, the capital enthusiasm may not be a bad thing. Calfuk is calm, SaaS valuation returns normally. More benign.

Different from foreign development paths, China's underlying cloud service structure is upside down with overseas conditions. The domestic IaaS is relatively mature. The infrastructure layer accounts for more than half of the entire cloud computing market, and the overseas SaaS market accounts for over 60%. From this, it can be seen that the domestic SaaS market still has many potential to be tapped.

At present, the number of SaaS solutions is still growing, which is the greatest affirmation of SaaS enterprises.

5. Data Intelligent Age: Quantum computing and light computing are new engines for promoting computing power growth

Whether it is new energy, semiconductor or intelligent manufacturing, SaaS, the core element of technology is data.

If data is regarded as a new "petroleum", then data intelligence is the "refinery". Data intelligence has obtained value by analyzing data, processing the original data as information and knowledge, and then transforming into decision -making or action, thereby becoming an indispensable technologies to promote digital transformation.

Therefore, in the future, the golden development of data intelligent development will appear in the future. As the base of an intelligent society, the computing power is being carried to an unprecedented height.

Zhang Gaonan, the partner of Huaying Capital, said in this data intelligent round table forum that voice recognition and neural network are the concepts that have been proposed decades ago. Essence

From left to right: Liu Zehui, founding partner of Xingtuo Capital Management, He Xixi, Strategic Consultation Expert He Xi, Qiu Yan, Managing Director of Hongyi Investment, Xia Ling, a partner of Mingli Capital, Xu Chen Shang), Huaying Capital Supervisor Zhang Gao Nan

But now that Moore's law is gradually topped, to break the computing power crisis in the Hou Moore era, investors have shown great enthusiasm for investment in basic computing power.

Among them, light computing has received unprecedented attention. Zhang Gaonan said that light has been mature in the field of communication and has great potential in terms of computing. At present, the photoelectric hybrid calculation is also a very popular field. Theoretically, it can increase the computing power by more than dozens of times, and at the same time, the cost performance is also very high. In the field of silicon light, the level of Chinese teams is topped in the world. In addition, quantum computing is considered to bring subversive innovation technologies to computing power, and it is expected to achieve index level computing power improvement. Advanced computing technologies represented by quantum computing and light calculation are considered a new engine to promote computing power growth.

In the future for data -oriented expansion, investment computing power can consolidate infrastructure in the era of digital wisdom. And make full use of the value of data, and deeply tie the industry, scenario, and specific business is the key falling point for digital transformation.

Liu Zehui, the founding partner of Xingtuo Capital Management, said in the sharing that informatization investment, it is best to increase the income, followed by cost reduction. Some retail technology companies on the market seem to be embracing informatization, such as installing sensors such as cameras, but it has no practical effect on promoting the sales of enterprises.

Therefore, the value of data needs to be built step by step. He Xi, a strategic consulting expert, said that the data intelligent empowerment enterprise realization model transformation cannot be achieved overnight. Be sure to use the data first to gradually understand the value of the data.

Xia Nong, a partner of Mingshi Capital, also believes that data intelligence should not only stay on the problem of solving information flow, capital flow, and logistics circulation efficiency. It is a large -scale growth based on a certain personalized basis. It is bound to require a system to standardize and structured personalized business. "

"More abstract, the core of the intelligent system solves the problem of standardization and structured business, and supports the large -scale growth of business. Only in this way can people be pulled out from the actual non -standard business." Therefore, the intelligent system is not only the intelligent system is not just the system is not only the system of intelligence. To solve the specific business itself, it can also cope with accidents in the business process. Only in this way can the system efficiency really improve.

To some extent, the changes in these tracks are outlined the path of China's industrial upgrading.

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