March 27, foreign media CoindeskCiting people familiar with the matter, Canaan, the world's second largest bitcoin mining machine manufacturer, is considering submitting a listing application to the newly established Science and Technology Innovation Board of the Shanghai Stock Exchange or the American Exchange, but has not yet made a final decision. According to sources, Jianan Zhizhi has communicated with the New York Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq Exchange, and may make a final plan before the end of the year.
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The road to listing is bumpy, and the Science and Technology Innovation Board and the US stock market have become the next direction of Canaan Intellectual Property
Looking back at the listing process of Canaan Zhizhi, the process has been full of twists and turns. Among the three major mining machine giants, Bitmain, Canaan and Ebang International, Canaan may be the most determined and persistent in going public.
(1) The first battle of A shares
In June 2016, Luyitong, which had been listed on the A-share market for 1 year and 4 months, began to plan the first major asset restructuring, and the target of the restructuring was Canaan.
Lu Yitong plans to pay 1.061 billion yuan in cash and 1.999 billion yuan by issuing shares to acquire all the shares from 14 shareholders of Jianan Zhizhi. The total transaction price is 3.06 billion yuan.
If the acquisition is successfully completed, Jianan Zhizhi will "backdoor listing" and become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Luyitong. Pumpkin Zhang will also hold 6.73% of the shares of the listed company, with a net worth of more than 500 million.
However, the acquisition was ultimately terminated due to objective factors such as the domestic market environment and regulatory policies.
Canaan Zhizhi's first and closest attempt to go public has come to an end.
(2) Moved to the New Third Board
Since then, Canaan has disappeared from the capital market for nearly 10 months.
When it reappeared, Jianan Zhizhi was already preparing for the new third board.
In August 2017, Jianan Zhizhi began to seek listing on the New Third Board.
Bad luck, in September of that year, the wind of regulating and regulating cryptocurrencies and transactions suddenly hit.
During the transition to the New Third Board, Jianan Zhizhi received four consultations from the share transfer company on October, November 7, November 21, and November 30 of that year, and was asked about the influence of factors such as the policy environment and the continuous Management capacity.
In March 2018, due to external factors, Canaan Zhizhi finally collapsed on the New Third Board.
(3) Another fight against Hong Kong stocks
After the failure of the NEEQ, Canaan did not choose to be silent like last time.
On May 15, 2018, Jianan Zhizhi regrouped and embarked on the journey of listing again. This time, their target is the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.
In 2018, when the digital currency market encountered a cold winter and the supervision was still unclear, the profits and development prospects brought by the mining machine business have been difficult to support Canaan Zhizhi to enter the Hong Kong stock market.
On November 15, information on the official website of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange showed that Canaan’s IPO application had expired.
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Layout chip and artificial intelligence
Canaan has been at the forefront of the development of bitcoin mining chips.
In 2015, Jianan Zhizhi successfully developed and began mass production of 28nm chips, making it on par with the most advanced counterparts in the world at that time;
In 2016, mass production of the first generation of 16nm chips began, entering the first camp of advanced chips in mainland China, and becoming the world's pioneer in using this advanced technology on blockchain-related ASIC chips.
In 2018, the world's first 7nm chip was successfully designed and mass-produced by TSMC in the second half of 2018.
From the Avalon generation to the 7nm chip in 2018, Canaan Creative has never stopped on the ASIC chip.
In addition to ASIC chips, Jianan Zhizhi began to actively deploy in the field of artificial intelligence as early as 2015, focusing on the research and development of artificial intelligence chips.
On December 19, 2017, Jianan Zhizhi released the latest artificial intelligence edge computing chip KPU.
The newly released KPU chip integrates artificial neural networks and high-performance processors, and will be applied to autonomous driving, voice interaction, smart home IoT terminals and image recognition, providing a full range of artificial intelligence application services for future social life. It enables the computing power of the cloud to be completed at the edge, saves bandwidth and energy, and realizes the localization of computing to protect privacy. The difficult artificial neural network will no longer be a patent for cloud computing.
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It is suspected that the original investor has added hundreds of millions of dollars in investment
Canaan Creative, which has hit a wall several times in the capital market, waited for good news at the beginning of 2019.
On March 12, according to the Securities Times, Canaan Zhizhi has completed a round of financing worth hundreds of millions of dollars. After completing this round of financing, Canaan's market valuation will reach billions of dollars.
Subsequently, Jianan Zhizhi also confirmed the news and said that the next step will be to lay out artificial intelligence and blockchain ecology, using chips as the entry point to build a large ecological platform for artificial intelligence and blockchain.
This major benefit brought the low-key Canaan Yunzhi a lot of attention from the market.
After all, under the current market conditions of cryptocurrencies, Canaan Intelligent, whose main business is mining machines, has obtained such a huge amount of financing, which is really exciting.
But according to CoindeskCiting people familiar with the matter, although Chinese media recently reported that Canaan has completed a round of financing worth hundreds of millions of dollars, in fact no new investors have entered, and the financing has come from existing shareholders of the company. As previously reported, Canaan Zhizhi’s recent financing news was published on the website of the Securities Times. It only stated that the company had obtained financing and was valued at billions of dollars, but the specific details were unknown. Therefore, it is very likely that it is an additional investment from the original owner of Canaan Zhizhi.
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Figure: Canaan’s 2015-2019 financing situation
In April 2015, Mizuki Zehua, Kong Jianping and Sun Qifeng contributed RMB 2.5 million, RMB 7.6 million and RMB 1.4 million to Canaan Zhizhi respectively. Two entities, Shuxin Investment and Porter Thiel, were subsequently established to respectively hold Kong and Sun's equity in Canaan Zhizhi.
"Although I lost a lot of money at the time, I feel that the Bitcoin industry is very promising, and I think the team that can develop Avalon must be a very good team." Talking about the original intention of investing in Jianan Zhizhi , said Kong Jianping.
"Because I am optimistic about this industry and joined this team, after joining the team, I am more optimistic about the entire industry." Kong Jianping entered Canaan Intellectual Property as an investor, and now he has become a partner, executive director and co-chairman of the board of directors of Canaan Intellectual Property.
From a "small workshop" with a registered capital of only 100,000 in 2013, to May 2017, it received nearly 300 million capital injections from Baopu Investment, Jin Jiang Group, and Tunlan Capital. In four years, Canaan Zhizhi's registered capital has increased by 3,000 times, and the market valuation has reached nearly RMB 3.3 billion.
The rapid financing brought about the rapid growth of the company's business. According to public information, in 2015, Jianan Yunzhi’s revenue was 47.7 million yuan, with a gross profit margin of 29.1%; in 2016, the growth rate of operating income exceeded 560%, reaching 316 million yuan, and the gross profit margin also increased to 41.7%; in 2017, the operating income It surged again to 1.308 billion yuan, with a gross profit margin of 46.2%.
In addition, interested people have also paid attention to the "national team" behind Canaan Yunzhi.
In May 2017, Jianan Zhizhi received nearly 300 million yuan in financing, and Jin Jiang Group, one of the leading investors, has attracted much attention. You know, Jin Jiang Group is the "national team" of Genzheng Miaohong, which is wholly owned by the Shanghai State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.
The Chinese government's attitude towards the blockchain is very clear: it supports blockchain technology and strongly supervises digital currencies.
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Reference article:
"Canaan's IPO Fails, Is the Future of Mining Machine Manufacturers IPO Uncertain? "
