Tuesday, November 24th 2020
Another Semiconductor Player Bites the Dust: Chinese HSMC Shutters Operations
The semiconductor manufacturing industry is a cutthroat competition mostly played between established forces. One need only look to AMD's decision to spin-off its manufacturing arm to create Global Foundries to see how even a grand company can hit manufacturing issues (though not only manufacturing issues hit AMD at that time, obviously) can threaten to shutter operations. Intel's recent issues with 10 nm and 7 nm fabrication also come to mind. as such, it comes at no great surprise that Chinese company Wuhan Hongxin Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (HSMC) has reportedly run out of cash. What's a little more surprising is how this company was actually backed by the Chinese government, and yet it still failed - proof of the semiconductor industry's technical and investment liquidity requirements.
HSMC back in 2017 announced plans to bring online a manufacturing plant in the central Chinese province of Hubei. The aim was to manufacture 14 nm and 7 nm chips as early as 2019/2020, funded by a $20 billion loan and numerous funding rounds. HSMC's ex-CEO Chiang Shang-yi (who previously served as former head of R&D at TSMC) said to EETimes that "Investors ran short of cash." And that was it for the company's aspirations. The company has now been absorbed by the municipal government in the central Chinese province of Hubei, and what will come of that (and the company's future) remain uncertain.
Sources:
EE Times, via Tom's Hardware
HSMC back in 2017 announced plans to bring online a manufacturing plant in the central Chinese province of Hubei. The aim was to manufacture 14 nm and 7 nm chips as early as 2019/2020, funded by a $20 billion loan and numerous funding rounds. HSMC's ex-CEO Chiang Shang-yi (who previously served as former head of R&D at TSMC) said to EETimes that "Investors ran short of cash." And that was it for the company's aspirations. The company has now been absorbed by the municipal government in the central Chinese province of Hubei, and what will come of that (and the company's future) remain uncertain.
19 Comments on Another Semiconductor Player Bites the Dust: Chinese HSMC Shutters Operations
Looks like a half-assed effort all around compared to bigger players like SMIC anyways.
I'm sure as hell not.
They realize they need all their weight if they want to combat TSMC and Samsung.
Though evidently it can't go on forever.
WARNING to ALL WESTERN TECH COMPANIES:
LOCK DOWN YOUR SERVERS N.O.W. !!!!!!!!!
In other words it ain't happening.
Most likely it was started with a given sum of money and told to make it work with the expectation of becoming self-sufficient but failed to do so in the end.
If I had to guess they are now clearing up the debts owed, whoever was running the show got "Terminated" along with their cronies and new management is on the way in.
I don't think they will mind being retired now. ;)
Everything was fine and great and going forward until February. I like that phrase, "unstable equipment engineering".
It is Communist China you know. :oops:
I'm just saying whoever decided it would be a great idea to stuff their pockets probrably got stuffed with lead afterwards....
But they'd never admit it or we would ever know about it.
You said that almost every startup was backed by the government. That's wrong and definitely not the case. Nobody gave Elon Musk a billion dollars to startup Tesla. I don't think he even got a dollar from the government then. He had to pretty much invest everything he had and go on a huge limb with his Paypal money. I think he even had to go into debt for it at some point. He could have failed literally hundreds of times in that process because of how risky it was at the time. You comment on something you don't even have a clue about.
I obviously wasn't talking about government subsidies. I'm talking about a state run, 100% crony investment with big money to literally create a new company out of nothing that:
- Already has the head of R&D from TSMC
- Oh yea, and 20 Billion dollars... :laugh::banghead:
That's the dream textbook scenario to explain how money MISmanagement works. Keep living your dream of "government gud", if you see no problem with this.