During the chip boom, when valuations increased tenfold in three months, even 50 million didn’t allow him to start a business.
Author｜Bao Yonggang Editor｜Liu Wei With 50 million yuan on the table, Dr. Zhang finally decided not to start a business. He had just left an acquired company and caught up with the new wave of chip entrepreneurship. A well-known VC is willing to spend 50 million yuan to let him form a team and become CEO. Dr. Zhang frequently meets with investors and identifies core members, and the project has reached the start-up stage. After a while, he stopped. After talking with investors and people in the market, Dr. Zhang felt that his abilities did not fully match what he really needed to start a business. Placing it in the spring of 2026, this is an abnormal decision. At that time, the valuation of popular chip projects could increase tenfold in three months, and technical backbones of major manufacturers were constantly being persuaded to start their own businesses. Most people were worried about missing the window, but Dr. Zhang chose to stay on the sidelines when the money was already in front of him. Wang Xiaofeng is already on the court. Wang Xiaofeng, who has a technical background, has worked for several domestic AI chip companies. What attracted him to starting a business was that he could finally do something according to his own judgment. What he is doing is one of the hottest directions in 2026, LPU chips. During a financing exchange, an investor asked him: What programming model should LPU adopt? For GPUs, the answer is SIMT. There is no ready answer for LPU chips. Wang Xiaofeng knows very well that this is not a problem that can be solved with a few pages of PPT. If he could calm down and study for two or three months, he felt that he could at least make a preliminary plan. The problem is, he doesn't have these two or three months. "There is no time at all, and I can't calm down to study slowly. Everyone in the team is under great pressure." It's not because the company has no money. After receiving the first investment in early 2026, it took more than half a year to advance three or four rounds of financing, and its valuation increased from the initial few hundred million yuan to nearly one billion yuan. Dr. Zhang chose not to start a business when faced with 50 million yuan, but Wang Xiaofeng was pushed by rounds of financing.
During the chip boom, when valuations increased tenfold in three months, even 50 million didn’t allow him to start a business.
Author｜Bao Yonggang Editor｜Liu Wei With 50 million yuan on the table, Dr. Zhang finally decided not to start a business. He had just left an acquired company and caught up with the new wave of chip entrepreneurship. A well-known VC is willing to spend 50 million yuan to let him form a team and become CEO. Dr. Zhang frequently meets with investors and identifies core members, and the project has reached the start-up stage. After a while, he stopped. After talking with investors and people in the market, Dr. Zhang felt that his abilities did not fully match what he really needed to start a business. Placing it in the spring of 2026, this is an abnormal decision. At that time, the valuation of popular chip projects could increase tenfold in three months, and technical backbones of major manufacturers were constantly being persuaded to start their own businesses. Most people were worried about missing the window, but Dr. Zhang chose to stay on the sidelines when the money was already in front of him. Wang Xiaofeng is already on the court. Wang Xiaofeng, who has a technical background, has worked for several domestic AI chip companies. What attracted him to starting a business was that he could finally do something according to his own judgment. What he is doing is one of the hottest directions in 2026, LPU chips. During a financing exchange, an investor asked him: What programming model should LPU adopt? For GPUs, the answer is SIMT. There is no ready answer for LPU chips. Wang Xiaofeng knows very well that this is not a problem that can be solved with a few pages of PPT. If he could calm down and study for two or three months, he felt that he could at least make a preliminary plan. The problem is, he doesn't have these two or three months. "There is no time at all, and I can't calm down to study slowly. Everyone in the team is under great pressure." It's not because the company has no money. After receiving the first investment in early 2026, it took more than half a year to advance three or four rounds of financing, and its valuation increased from the initial few hundred million yuan to nearly one billion yuan. Dr. Zhang chose not to start a business when faced with 50 million yuan, but Wang Xiaofeng was pushed by rounds of financing.
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