Time and opportunity in the entrepreneurial tide are always racing against time. The Jingchi technology unmanned vehicle running on the self-driving track is slowly slowing down. It is equipped with a new engine but does not have much fuel to roar and accelerate, and it is slowly stalemate. Keeping, avoiding, consuming.
At the 2018 China Guangzhou International Investment Annual Conference in March this year, Jing Chi Technology's vice president of operations Zhang Li once revealed that the company’s A round of financing is in progress and plans to raise US$100-200 million. Competitors with such a quota are now Successfully arrived, such as Roadstar in May. ai won US$128 million in Series A financing. In July, Xiaoma Zhixing Pony. ai also announced the completion of the A1 round of financing of US$102 million, plus the US$112 million A round obtained at the beginning of the year, Pony. Ai's Series A financing totaled US$214 million, and everyone seemed to be gaining momentum.
The long autopilot business cycle is difficult to realize. Although it is the general trend of the future, the capital for daring to invest in this track is relatively limited. The more money others get, it also means that there are fewer and fewer opportunities for Jingchi. In the process of searching for the A round, Chi was caught in a series of legal disputes about internal and external troubles, and he was about to write a drama.
Due to Baidu’s focus on "crimination", the core founder, Wang Jin, went out of the house in exchange for a short period of peace, and the subsequent exchange of blood of the executives caused adverse reactions that led to the runaway litigation lawsuit. In the face of the predicament, Jingchi Technology has been propagating The advantages and progress in its own technology are trying to regain the confidence of capital, but the institutions that have generously donated it are waiting to see the wind and betting.
From a hopeful beginning to a hovering full of uncertainty, Jingchi's potential stock is really a pity, and the future is unpredictable.
From Baidu hero to constraints
Jing Chi’s founder, Wang Jin, worked at Baidu for 7 years. This is a relatively long and stable experience in his career. Before that, he seemed to be more likely to jump on the right boat at the right time than Lu Qi. I have also been drifting and fighting in the Internet arena, and I have been rushing to the waves, but the result of jumping off the boat does not seem to be too successful. It is just as turbulent as Jing Chi's fate later, but the aftertaste of luck is bitter.
In 2000, Wang Jin returned to China from the United States and joined Ali as a senior technical director under the recommendation of his former friend Wu Jiong. Wu Jiong was a colleague with Wang Jin when he was a foreign Oracle company and later served as CTO of Alibaba. The initial stage of Ali was not as tall as it is today. At that time, the electronic trading system was down almost every day. Wang Jin and the technical team were exhausted all day to deal with faults and refactor the system. Most of the time was spent writing programs and codes. Coincidentally, it coincided with the economic crisis that the Internet bubble burst. Ali's early profit income was difficult to see. The motivation of the team was basically supplemented by Jack Ma's positive energy speech. Many people couldn't hold on, and Wang Jin also chose to leave.
In 2003, the vitality of the market economy gradually recovered. The winter of the Internet became warmer. Wang Jin, who was more familiar with e-commerce technology, entered eBay. At that time, the international e-commerce platform eBay entered China and gradually invested and acquired eBay. The founder Shao Yibo retired from eBay headquarters and sent people. Taking over the China region, but the airborne foreign executives’ inadequate control over China’s Internet arena and local culture was an early failure. Alibaba launched Taobao.com this year. In February 2004, Ali received Softbank and Fidelity. In the next two years, Taobao’s market share in the e-commerce market rose to more than 70%, eventually squeezing eBay out of China.
eBay failed in China. At the time, Wang Jin, the CTO of eBay China and the general manager of EBay China R&D Center, had no reason to stay, but at this time, Google was lucky to throw an olive branch. In July 2005, Google decided to set up a product research and development center in China. Li Kaifu, Google’s global vice president and president of Greater China, urgently needed to recruit competent talents. Wang Jin became the top pick on the list and was responsible for the development of Google’s advertising monetization business in China. The reason is that Google announced that it would give up its economic interests and withdraw from China.
As a Chinese employee, Wang Jin didn’t like Google’s extreme attitude towards China. At this time, Google’s Chinese competitor Baidu became Wang Jin’s target, and the best reason to convince Robin Li was to monetize Baidu’s advertising business. In China, it doubles and wins Google.
On April 15, 2010, Wang Jin airborne and joined Baidu as the vice president of technology. He began the golden period of his career. Perhaps it was Robin’s eager expectation for returnees and Google-style international corporate culture. Two or three months later, Robin Li let Wang Jin It took over most of Baidu’s engineers, but in the next few years it also indirectly caused the loss of the company’s elderly, such as Baidu’s senior technical director Cui Shanshan, senior technical director Guo Yu, Baidu cloud technical team leader Yang Zhenkun, and the predecessor of Fengchao System Liu Zizheng, Technical Director of Shifen Bidding Ranking System, Jia Lei, Baidu Voice Technology, and others left Baidu one after another. After resource integration, Wang Jin realized the launch of Baidu Fengchao 2.0, completed the construction of the mobile cloud business unit, and made Baidu revenue every time it was mentioned. Wang Jin is very proud of his 10-fold increase in 5 years.
"Robin has a very good place. He is very authoritative to me. When I deploy troops, he doesn't care about me." Wang Jinzeng said in the interview. In December 2013, Wang Jin was promoted to senior vice president of Baidu and started the research and development of driverless projects. In May 2014, he successfully participated in digging people and recruited the great artificial intelligence god Wu Enda into Baidu, laying the foundation for Baidu artificial intelligence technology system, December 2015 Baidu's autonomous driving division was established, and Wang Jin appointed himself as the general manager to gradually expand Baidu's unmanned vehicle team.
Wang Jin tried to split the driverless business unit and independently finance development, just like Google’s parent company Alphabet separated the autonomous driving project Waymo from Google X Labs, but such a decision was not approved by Robin Li at the time, nor It's difficult to understand, because Baidu's failure in mobile Internet, O2O and other fields at that time caused the former giant to think anxiously about how to transform and change lanes instead of repeatedly distracting.
In January 2017, Baidu airborne a person more vigorous and vigorous than Wang Jin, the former Baidu Group President and Chief Operating Officer Lu Qi, who is fully responsible for Baidu’s products, technology, sales and market operations, and directly reports to Robin Li. The tube has to obey the command. At a regular meeting on March 1, Lu Qi announced that Baidu Autonomous Driving Division (L4), Baidu Intelligent Car Division (L3), and Baidu Internet of Vehicles (Car Life etc.) merged to form Baidu Intelligent Driving Business Group (IDG) , Lu Qi personally took command and concurrently served as general manager.
It doesn’t matter if autonomous driving doesn’t go out independently, it still has to be forcibly integrated. Wang Jin’s speech at this regular meeting is a big reversal. Let’s start by saying that today is a "milestone" for Baidu's unmanned vehicles. Baidu's autonomous driving performance is thriving. But the next thing is "I will resign from my position as the general manager of the autonomous driving division due to personal and family reasons."
This is not a friendly breakup experience. Baidu's internal emails explained Wang Jin's whereabouts as an internal rest adjustment, but on March 27 Wang Jin said in public that he would officially leave Baidu from April 1 and start his own business around autonomous driving. On April 3, Jingchi Technology was established in Silicon Valley, USA. Everything seemed to be hurried and planned for a long time, which became the new beginning of Wang Jin's career.
Jingchi speed that stopped abruptly
Star executives’ entrepreneurship has always been the target of capital pursuit. Moreover, there are only a handful of entrepreneurs with high barriers to autopilot technology. Jingchi Technology has quickly become one of the top investment targets on the narrow track. Wang Jin’s years of accumulation and experience in Baidu have also made this The team has become the center of the whirlpool of money and talents. No one can predict that success will be Wang Jin and failure will be Wang Jin.
In Wang Jin's view, Jingchi can move forward on its own. The core technical team must quickly attract more top talents: scientists, engineers, and programmers are indispensable, so co-founder and CTO Han Xu and vice president Yang Qingxiong joined successively. Han Xu was previously the chief scientist of Baidu's autonomous driving division. Yang Qingxiong was the senior director of Didi Chuxing's unmanned driving. Li Yan, the former head of Shenzhou Rent-A-Car, was the co-founder and system engineer at Jingchi. , And the top programmer representative is Chen Shixi, the former Baidu T9-level employee. In addition, in terms of capital operation, he recruited Lv Qing, the former CFO of Lidar manufacturer Velodyne LiDAR, to join. This is a team that allows capital to shine. The reason for not investing.
What makes Jingchi Technology achieve its position in the industry is the "Jingchi Speed" that Wang Jin is proud of. The company was established in April. Jingchi completed the first closed road driverless test on May 12, and won the United States on June 18. The road test license issued by California GMV, completed the first open road driverless test on June 24, and tested commuting in a sea of ​​cars during peak hours in Silicon Valley on September 8. At a media sharing meeting in September, Wang Jin said, Jingchi is the fastest growing unmanned car company in the world, and its technology level is comparable to that of Google Waymo, which embarrassed the old owner Baidu and also made capital revel in it. At the beginning of Jingchi's establishment, Huachuang Capital led the investment of 3000 Ten thousand US dollars in angel round financing. In September, Qiming Venture Capital led the investment of 52 million US dollars in Pre-A round of financing. "Investment institutions came here especially, much more than we thought." Wang Jin recalled.
In the industry, Jingchi Technology decided to go a long way, like Waymo to make L4 passenger car driverless solutions, focusing on future travel, and this technology direction is changing from a "single fire" after Waymo's verification In order to start a prairie prairie situation, the Chinese market is particularly enthusiastic, returning to China to attract money has become a must, but not everyone welcomes him to return. On December 22, 2017, Baidu sued Wang Jin and Jingchi Company to the Beijing Intellectual Property Court on the grounds of infringing on trade secrets, accusing Wang Jin of planning a new company before leaving his job, violating the obligation of restricting competition and not recruiting Baidu employees. , And by not returning computer and printer equipment to steal company secrets, etc., requested the court to order Wang Jin and Jingchi to immediately stop the infringement of Baidu’s business activities and compensate them for economic losses and reasonable expenses of 50 million yuan. Jingchi Technology became China’s automatic The protagonist of the first legal dispute in the field of driving intellectual property is known as the "first case of China's autonomous driving."
But a week later, Wang Jin led the Jingchi team back to China and settled the headquarters in Guangzhou. At the return conference on December 28, it was raining lightly in Huangpu District, Guangzhou, and the chairs at the seats were wet, but this did not go away. Wang Jin’s passion, instead, he said, "I think this is a good sign." "We are very excited and look forward to it. The motherland, we are back." In addition to a series of local landing plans, he also announced that from 2018 Starting from the first quarter, 500-1000 unmanned vehicles will be mass-produced throughout the year. The site will be located in Guangzhou International Biological Island for normalized commercial operation of unmanned vehicles, and a 10 billion industrial fund centered on Jingchi Technology will be established to deploy unmanned upstream and downstream. Industry and artificial intelligence, together with local governments and enterprises to create an ecosystem, is at a time when the scenery is boundless.
But Baidu’s paper complaint was overwhelmed by this omen, which was not much better. Wang Jin responded to this, saying: “My colleagues think that I copied Baidu is the highest praise for us. If there is anything really wrong, we will testify in the courtâ€, “controversial. There is absolutely no factual basis for the matter", "I have not received any court summons or information. We are now focusing on the research and development of unmanned driving, and do not want to fight."
Jingchi Technology's business, which hasn't been fighting, is proceeding as usual. On January 30, 2018, it opened the country's first unmanned normalized trial operation in Guangzhou Biological Island. However, the case was deadlocked for two months, and the result was unexpected. On the evening of February 26, news of a heavy personnel cut quickly spread. Investors, Jingchi internal executives and partners confirmed from multiple parties. Founder of Jingchi Technology And CEO Wang Jin has resigned from the company, and the company's co-founder and CTO Han Xu took over the CEO position. Yang Qingxiong, vice president of engineering, told the media that Wang Jin left the company due to “personal family reasons†and no longer participated directly or indirectly. Or interfere in any Jingchi business, this will not have any impact on the company's operations, but he left alone, it is indeed regrettable.
Wang Jin’s departure made Baidu’s "hatred" shift away from Jingchi Technology. Less than 10 days after Wang Jin left his job, Baidu initiated the withdrawal of Jingchi Technology. Jingchi Technology also obediently joined the Baidu Apollo camp to show friendship, but It’s a pity that Wang Jin’s departure is not only a personal regret, but the impact is really not small. Although Jingchi Technology’s technological progress under the CTO’s helm has not fallen behind, for example, in March, Jingchi unmanned vehicles achieved the first riverbed tunnel crossing in China. In June, the Jingchi unmanned vehicle completed the safety test under heavy rain and cooperated with GAC, but the effect after Wang Jinhua was not satisfactory.
Autopilot entrepreneurship requires continuous high-level financing and rolling blessings. Funds are blood and life. The departure of the core promoters and founders not only did not let the company get rid of the burden and return to the top, but fell into senior management due to improper handling of internal rights and interests. Infighting has not only been revealed that the Pre-A round of financing is almost not in place, but the $100-200 million round A has been dragged on again and again, and there is no sign of landing.
The new CEO Han Xu expressed disgust that the disputes between Baidu, Wang Jin and Jingchi were regarded as "gong Douju" by the outside world. He believed that this was a kind of harm to a technology-driven and mission-oriented company. He clarified Pre- The A round of funding is already in place, and the development goals will remain the same. However, Zhang Li, vice president of operations of Jingchi Technology, revealed in an interview that Jingchi expects to produce 50 to 80 unmanned vehicles in the first half of 2018, and strive to achieve 200 by the end of the year. Jingchi’s main problem is that it is not fast enough. In terms of financing and talent recruitment, compared with Wang Jin’s annual mass production target of 500-1000 unmanned vehicles, there is a big gap.
Three years of commercial use, five years of mass production, ten years of changing the way of travel slogans are still in my ears, but Wang Jin's advertised "Jingchi Speed" came to an abrupt end.
Who does the name "Jingchi Technology" belong to?
During the critical period of Series A financing and the critical stage of technological development, a wave of unsettled waves broke out. Jingchi Technology’s high-level personnel changes disrupted the rhythm. Three of the six co-founders left one after another, Wang Jin, Pan Sining, Yang Qingxiong, and The center of the second dispute vortex was caused by Pan Sining.
Yang Qingxiong founded Muyue Technology Co., Ltd. in Shenzhen in June this year. The main focus is on autonomous driving freight logistics solutions. It is still clean, and Pan Sining, who is regarded as Wang Jin’s old department, sued the current situation in Beijing and Guangzhou courts. Chi Technology executives sued CEO Han Xu, CFO Lu Qing and others for infringing on personal rights.
According to industrial and commercial data, Jingchi HongKong Limited is the investment matrix. Jingchi currently has Beijing Jingqi Information Technology Co., Ltd., Guangzhou Jingchi Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing Jingqi Technology Co., Ltd., Anqing Jingchi Technology Co., Ltd., and Guangzhou Jingchi For backbone business companies such as Qi Technology Co., Ltd. and Shanghai Jingchi Technology Co., Ltd., Pan Sining served as a natural person shareholder and legal representative when Beijing Jingqi Information Technology Co., Ltd. was registered and established on March 16, 2017, accounting for 28.89% of the shares. , And on January 8, 2018, Pan Sining and Yang Qingxiong invested in the establishment of Jingchi Technology Co., Ltd. as an executive director and legal representative, while holding 60% of the shares.
After Wang Jin left, Pan Sining moved away from the central area of ​​interest in the process of reshuffling the internal interests of Jingchi Technology, so two cases rushed to the face. On July 7, Pan Sining made a public crusade, accusing Jingchi Technology CFO Lu Qing and others for pledging Pan Sining’s equity without Pan’s consent. They also forged Pan Sining’s signature and resolutions of the shareholders’ meeting to take Beijing Jingqi Information Technology Co., Ltd. The legal representative and executive director were illegally changed to Lu Qing. Forged Pan Sining’s signature and falsely claimed that the company’s official seal and business license had been lost, deceiving the Bureau of Industry and Commerce to make a replacement. Pan Sining used this as a basis to push the Haidian District People's Court of Beijing to file a case for trial.
In the face of the sudden complaint, Jingchi officials quickly issued a statement saying that Pan is no longer an employee of Jingchi Technology. "The shareholders meeting of Beijing Jingqi Information Technology Co., Ltd. dismissed Pan as the legal representative in accordance with the law and the company’s articles of association. The announcement made by Pan on the Internet is seriously inconsistent with the position of the executive director." He was ordered to delete, but he was cold in front of the evidence of the "Industrial and Commercial Archives on the Change of Jing Qi's Legal Representative" thrown out by Pan Sining. According to the appraisal conclusions of the Academy of Forensic Forensic Sciences, Pan Sining’s signatures and fingerprints in the above-mentioned industrial and commercial change registration information were all forged. Jingchi officials were speechless and have remained silent so far and have not responded.
The forgery has not yet been resolved, and Jingchi Technology Co., Ltd. invested by Pan Sining infringed on its corporate name rights and sold Guangzhou Jingchi Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing Jingqi Information Technology Co., Ltd., Han Xu, Lu Qing, etc. The case was filed for review by the Huangpu District People’s Court of Guangzhou City, accusing it of failing to fully use the company name during the introduction, promotion and operation of the company, and using the company name of "Jingchi Technology" or "Jingchi" without authorization, resulting in a conflict with the plaintiff’s company name Confusion, which caused serious misleading to the public, greatly affected the plaintiff’s right to use the company name "Jingchi Technology", and believed that the four defendants violated the General Provisions of the Civil Law, the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, and the Provisions on the Administration of Enterprise Name Registration , The "Administrative Measures for the Registration of Enterprise Names" and other legal provisions seriously violated the plaintiff’s right to exclusive use of the enterprise name, requiring the defendant to immediately stop the infringement.
The relationship is broken, and the abbreviation of this name is not allowed to be used properly, which makes capital and the public very embarrassed. If you win the case, it is likely that the Jingchi technology you are talking about is not the unmanned Jingchi technology. The dust returns to the dust. The soil, walk on each bridge and walk its own way.
Conclusion
According to the former Baidu autonomous driving product manager who is close to Pan Sining, Pan Sining is determined to fight a star startup company by himself. This matter will not come to an abrupt end. We will definitely ask for a result. When the result is basically finalized, we will meet with the media publicly. Jingchi Technology, which originally lost its acceleration, is like a car stuck in a quagmire in such a dispute.
Although Wang Jin was regretful, he was free and easy, but where he would go has become a cloud of fog, and it is almost impossible to stop interfering with Jingchi Technology. From the moment when Baidu’s autonomous driving division was established, Wang Jin regarded autonomous driving as his life-long career thereafter. According to media reports, Wang Jin once again started his own business in the field of autonomous driving. In order to learn from his lesson, the newly founded company Shareholders and key members do not have his name in terms of information, and he will no longer give anyone a handle. He will also prepare for the establishment of a national intelligent car laboratory and set up a 6 billion-scale industrial fund. It is difficult to find its trace, and he has repeatedly checked with Wang Jin himself. Wang Jin never gave a positive response to this.
On September 6, 2018, in the promotion of the 2018 China Artificial Intelligence Summit held in Nanjing, his appearance as an "intelligent travel fund investor" became a highlight, but after communicating with the event party, he learned that Wang Jin was in this event. There is neither a speech arrangement nor a discussion session, nor has it become an interview guest as a sought-after object as in the past, and this new title is only virtual tentatively, "He just supports it."
After the general trend faded, the 54-year-old Wang Jin chose to be extremely low-key and cautious, while Jingchi Technology staggered in the mud, struggling to advance the goal of large-scale driverless operation in China in 2020, without knowing the end of success or failure. Where to head.
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