"Mr. Scott, to be honest, I hope that in the personal computer display chip market, NVIDIA, 3dfx, and AtI will compete with each other and make progress together."
Sun Jian was speaking from his heart. He did not know about 3dfx in his previous life, nor did he know that 3dfx was acquired by NVIDIA at a low price. However, a high-tech company that occupied 85% of the 3D graphics card market in 1997 did not expect that in less than three years It collapsed, and Wukong Angel Investment Fund (KIF) had no chance even if it wanted to cash out everything.
NVIDIA, 3dfx and AtI are all Sun Jian's investments. NVIDIA has almost become synonymous with GPU in its previous life, and it is also an important spare tire, but I have never thought about which company to control! 3dfx was acquired by NVIDIA, and its R&D personnel, core patents, and market share would all be acquired by NVIDIA. Generally speaking, there would be no loss to Sun Jian and he would not intervene. However, the three founders and cEo came to request AtIc to take control. Sun Jian Jian can't just sit back and do nothing.
As the largest shareholder of 3dfx, KIF does not participate in the company's daily operating activities. However, as one of the company's board members, Lin Chang is well aware of 3dfx's major decisions, core technologies and core personnel, and writes an investment analysis report every year and sends it to Sun Jian, report the situation in person.
3dfx spent US$141 million to acquire German graphics card manufacturer Stb in early 1999, hoping to monopolize the retail market. The result of this not only caused 3dfx to break with large graphics card manufacturers such as Diamond and Innovation, but also caused these large manufacturers to invest in NVIDIA's embrace has led to insufficient production capacity.
Regardless of its own financial crisis, 3dfx once again paid Gigapixel a high price of US$180 million in 2000, hoping to get a large business order from Microsoft's Xbox game console as a graphics chip manufacturer, but in the end it came to nothing and became a pressure. The straw that killed 3dfx.
Sun Jian also knew it, but did not interfere.
In 1999, 3dfx had sales of US$370 million, down 21% year-on-year, and profits of US$21 million, down 54% year-on-year. The total share capital increased to 52 million shares (a 1-for-2 dividend was implemented in 1998). The stock price reached a maximum of 35.2 US dollars, and trading was suspended. The current stock price was US$8.53, with a total market value of US$10,000.
KIF invested a total of US$25 million in November 1995 and January 1997 respectively to participate in 3dfx's Series A and Series B financing. Now it holds 18 million shares with a market value of US$10,000, and has only earned 5.14 times!
During the same period, the Nasdaq index rose nearly 6 times. In Sun Jian's eyes, it was equivalent to a failed investment!
Huang Renxun was only willing to pay 100 million US dollars to acquire 3dfx without considering the interests of KIF. Even if senior executives such as Scott and Alex decided to sell, Lin Chang would exercise veto power on behalf of KIF at the shareholders' meeting.
US$100 million in compensation will be paid to existing shareholders of 3dfx. Based on the shares, KIF can only receive US$62.28 million!
Sun Jian suspected that Huang Renxun might be willing to spend 10,000 US dollars considering that KIF was the largest shareholder.
In the acquisition of 3dfx, Huang Renxun took advantage of the situation and lacked the ethics of being a human being. Even if the acquisition is successful, the core members of 3dfx will be resentful of him, and the integration time will be longer. Once NVIDIA has a business crisis, these people will turn against him. one strike.
In his previous life, Sun Jian also read online articles about Huang Renxun turning from a billionaire to a multi-millionaire, NVIDIA's stock price hovering at US$1 for a period of time, and his life hanging on a thread. I wonder if these core members of 3dfx played a role?
At the beginning of the year, there was news that NVIDIA planned to acquire 3dfx. Taking advantage of the weakest moment of this mortal enemy, 3dfx, launched a heavy attack. The shopping mall is like a battlefield. In business, for the sake of the interests of shareholders, Huang Renxun is a competent chairman!
NVIDIA received a US$400 million Xbox graphics chip order from Microsoft at the end of last year, and reciprocated the favor by transferring the company's latest 3D display technology to Microsoft, completely moving towards the DirectX camp, causing DirectX to occupy half of the API market.
This is NVI
Although Sun Jian was a little uncomfortable after hearing about dIA's business practices, KIF had originally promised in writing that as a strategic investor, it would not participate in the company's daily operating activities and should keep its promise.
Once NVIDIA becomes the dominant player in the 3D graphics card industry, KIF will also be the biggest beneficiary.
pENG belongs to the openGL camp. Kunpeng software is also compatible with directx and Glide to avoid overly irritating Americans. pENG has not developed its own API and has become an important member of openGL. Applications developed on its basis can be easily and conveniently transplanted to various applications. platform.
In June 1999, SGI, the creator of openGL, decided to jointly develop the next-generation graphics interface Ferihant with Microsoft. Ferihant will include the respective advantages of directx and openGL, and add advanced functions such as scene mapping.
Ferihant is used in pENG and indos systems as a replacement for openGL and directx.
However, not long after the Ferihant plan was carried out, cracks appeared in the cooperation between the two parties. Microsoft was not actively cooperating. SGI was very dissatisfied with the idea of merging SGI's graphics technology into DirectX. In August, SGI subsequently announced the suspension of cooperation with Microsoft and the withdrawal of all Developer, Ferihant died young.
From then on, openGL and directx seemed to have nothing to do with each other.
In the face of interests, all promises are unreliable!
Sun Jian suddenly realized the serious consequences if openGL and directx banned the use of pENG. The Innovative Software Research Institute led by Liu Xiaokun and Ye Jin began to develop its own API-Wukong (ukong) in September 1999, which means magical power. Now ukongApI has been It is run in the intranet and kept secret as a backup tire.
openGL is now managed by KhronosGroup.
In January this year, Zhang Jilin and Yan Yuanchao went to Beaverton, Oregon, USA on behalf of pENG to attend the founding meeting of KhronosGroup. Members include SGI, pENG, Intel, 3dlabs, Nvidia, AtI, 3dfx, Sunicrosystes, discreet and Evans&Sutherland. A number of internationally renowned multimedia industry leaders.
KhronosGroup is committed to developing open standard application programming interfaces API to enable rich media creation, acceleration and playback on multiple platforms and terminal devices.
KhronosGroup is an open non-profit organization with funds provided by member firms to support the operation of the association. The society is headquartered in Beaverton, Oregon, USA.
"Mr. Scott, Mr. Alex, if NVIDIA is willing to bid for 3dfx with a total market value of 10,000 US dollars, Wukong Angel Investment Fund will vote in favor at the shareholders' meeting!"
Ha ha……
Scott, Alex, Gary and Ross all smiled, everyone saw hope, and the atmosphere in the office suddenly became relaxed.
3dfx has been reduced from the king of the past to a lost dog, and Huang Renxun and NVIDIA are indispensable! The management and R&D personnel of 3dfx are unwilling to be acquired by NVIDIA. However, the company is now financially strapped. It cannot get a loan from the bank and cannot even get compensation for the lawsuit. It has to violate the commitments signed by both parties and come to Sun Microsystems. Jian asked for help, asking AtIc Holdings, which was 3dfx's only chance of survival.
AtIc is a financial investment company registered in the United States. In addition to KIF, AtIc also controls GcA, AtIc Securities Company and Blizzard Entertainment. It has invested in Apple, Qualcomm, Ec, cyerInc., q, Zeiss Jena, carlZeissAG... …
By the end of 1999, the company's assets under management exceeded US$100 billion, reaching US$104.3 billion, ranking 14th among financial investment companies in the United States.
