Canaan updates its prospectus for the second time, with revenue exceeding 950 million yuan in the first nine months

Recently, blockchain has become the most watched industry buzzword. At present, the development of domestic industrial blockchain is in its early stages, and there are still many technical and regulatory issues to be resolved. It must be developed together with technologies such as IoT, security encryption and AI to create a complete solution. Blockchain technology is promoting the fourth industrial revolution together with the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence (AI).

Canaan CEO Zhang Nangeng

As the only high-tech enterprise in China that is driven by both blockchain and artificial intelligence, Canaan is becoming the core driving force for the integration and innovation of blockchain and artificial intelligence technologies.

On November 5, Canaan's US stock prospectus pre-disclosed the second update, planning to raise $400 million. The latest data shows that in the first nine months of this year, Canaan's total revenue has reached 959.4 million yuan. At the same time, Canaan has mass-produced more than 150 million ASICs in 2017, 2018 and the nine months ending September 30, 2019. In addition, the company has currently sold more than 50,000 AI chips and modules.

Continuously break through key bottlenecks in blockchain and AI performance

On October 24, relevant national departments studied the development, innovation and trends of blockchain technology, and emphasized that the integrated application of blockchain technology plays an important role in new technological innovation and industrial transformation. It proposed to take blockchain as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies, clarify the main direction, increase investment, focus on conquering a number of key core technologies, and accelerate the innovation and development of blockchain technology and industry.

This means that blockchain technology has officially become a national industry, and it also shows that the central government attaches great importance to independent innovation in the entire science and technology field.

Blockchain and artificial intelligence have the potential to impact every industry in the economy, and computing power is a key bottleneck in the performance of blockchain and artificial intelligence. However, when combined with existing blockchain technology, we found that there are still problems such as high energy consumption, slow processing speed, insufficient underlying security, and insufficient nodes.

In order to promote the greater integration of blockchain and AI technologies into people's work and daily life, it is necessary to make the computing power of these technologies energy-efficient, affordable and reliable so that they can support applications. In view of this, ASIC plays a key role in supporting the development and availability of blockchain and AI technologies, because compared with other types of chips, ASIC can provide equivalent computing power with significantly high energy efficiency and low cost.

As a leading provider of supercomputing solutions, Canaan is the world's first high-tech company to apply ASIC technology to the blockchain field, and has successfully realized the commercialization of ASIC design in blockchain applications. It has also made breakthroughs in multiple technical fields to improve the performance of ASIC, such as low voltage, high energy efficiency operation and high computing density, which are the key points of blockchain and AI solutions.

Blockchain giant, AI chip upstart

According to the prospectus, as of September 30, 2019, Canaan has registered 69 patents in China, including 6 inventions, 50 utility model patents and 13 design patents. As of that date, the company has registered 81 software copyrights and 30 IC layout design rights in China.

Through years of ASIC design experience, the company owns most of the intellectual property rights used and has accumulated valuable expertise and multi-generation process parameters. It has established a close and reliable partnership with leading global suppliers such as TSMC, which enables the company to achieve high quality, high yield and stable production. Since June 2015, the company has completed 7 tape-outs for 28nm, 16nm and 7nm ASICs with a success rate of 100%.

In September 2018, Canaan was the first company in the industry to deliver a commercial edge computing AI chip based on the RISC-V architecture and self-developed neural network accelerator. Frost & Sullivan said that the K210 has excellent performance and is widely regarded as a milestone in the development of hardware in the field of artificial intelligence edge computing. Canaan's AI chip is a one-stop integrated solution under the SoC architecture, with two major functions of machine vision and machine hearing, which can seamlessly integrate different algorithms to handle various application scenarios, including smart home, smart retail and smart driving. And it is able to innovate with partners to launch the best solutions for AI and provide end customers with high-performance, full-scenario industry AI solutions.

K210 has received strong interest from the RISC-V developer community. As of September 30, 2019, the company has shipped more than 53,000 chips and development kits to AI product developers, most of which are from overseas, and has begun working with more than 30 AI algorithm companies to develop overall AI solutions for end consumers.

Policies are favorable again. Once the listing is successful, it will bring positive effects to the two major industries.

Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Guiding Opinions on Accelerating the Cultivation of New Models and New Business Forms of Shared Manufacturing to Promote the High-Quality Development of the Manufacturing Industry" (hereinafter referred to as the "Opinions"), proposing to promote the construction of new infrastructure. Strengthen the construction of new infrastructure such as 5G, artificial intelligence, industrial Internet, and Internet of Things, expand the coverage of high-speed, large-capacity, and low-latency networks, encourage manufacturing companies to achieve the interconnection of people, machines, and things through intranet transformation and upgrading, and provide information network support for shared manufacturing.

The Opinions clearly stated that by 2022, 20 shared manufacturing demonstration platforms with strong innovation capabilities and great industry influence will be formed, the level of resource intensiveness will be further improved, the allocation of manufacturing resources will be continuously optimized, and the recognition of the shared manufacturing model will be significantly improved. Promote and support 50 shared manufacturing demonstration projects with good development prospects and strong driving effects, further deepen the application of shared manufacturing in industrial clusters, and significantly improve the efficiency of production organization within clusters. The supporting systems such as credit and standards that support the development of shared manufacturing have been gradually improved, common technology research and development have made certain breakthroughs, the foundation of digital development has been continuously consolidated, and the shared manufacturing collaborative development ecosystem has been initially formed.

At present, Canaan has achieved independent design, large-scale mass production capabilities, a broad market base and a complete ecosystem in the field of edge AI chips. According to Canaan's plan, the company's new generation of AI chips is based on the architecture developed by 5G. With the latest favorable policies of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, Canaan will become the biggest beneficiary.

Once Canaan successfully goes public in the U.S., it will become the world's first blockchain stock, and will also be the first Chinese AI chip with independent intellectual property rights to be listed in the U.S. It will play an immeasurable positive role in the development of both the blockchain industry and the AI ​​industry. The integration and innovation of blockchain and AI technologies will usher in a new period of explosive growth.

(Editor: Wang Wei)