This wasn't Li Miaomiao's first time in England; she had previously visited Cambridge and Oxford during her high school holiday study tours.
This trip to England feels different from the last one. This time, I came with a goal: Kechuang Bio wants to acquire an AI chip company in England and use it as a basis to build an AI chip R&D center in England.
Secondmind is only the primary target of Kechuang Bio, with several other companies as alternatives.
This was Li Miaomiao's first trip abroad since the global pandemic began. After getting off the plane, she took a deep breath; she had almost suffocated from wearing an N95 mask on the plane.
"Everyone, after you get to the hotel today, go through the materials you prepared again so that there won't be any mistakes tomorrow."
This trip to England was specifically requested by Li Miaomiao to be handled by her, because she wanted to stop by Singapore on her way back and visit Zheng Li there.
"We are a biopharmaceutical company in China and we hope to acquire your company. We will not interfere with the normal operation of your company for the first three years after the acquisition."
The reason why Tencent is more popular than Ali in the investment world is that Tencent rarely interferes in the operation of its invested companies, while Ali likes to participate in the operation of its invested companies and replace the senior executives of its invested companies with employees who came from Ali.
In the investment world, Ali is much more domineering than Tencent.
"We will only give you advice on AI chips and algorithms."
"Employee and executive compensation will remain unchanged."
"This is the information about Kechuang Biotechnology. You can take a look."
As a global leader in the field of brain-computer interfaces, Kechuang Bio has a high profile.
While they might not be able to name the specific company, foreigners will instantly understand once they hear about the Chinese company that specializes in brain-computer interface phones and endorphins.
Endorphins are as well-known in the biomedical field as brain-computer interfaces.
After the simultaneous interpreter translated Li Miaomiao's words, the chairman of SecondMind nodded: "Okay, let me take a look first."
The meeting room was quiet, with only the rustling sound of pages turning.
"I do not deny that Kechuang Bio is an outstanding company with unique contributions in its field."
"But we are curious as to why Kechuang Bio would want to acquire Secondmind? According to the company's information, there is no overlap between our fields of business."
"Secondmind mainly focuses on AI algorithms and AI chips related to autonomous driving, while Kechuang Bio seems to only be involved in brain-computer interfaces besides biomedicine."
“When your company acquires us, I feel there is very little overlap or complementarity between us.”
"So why should we accept your acquisition?"
Li Miaomiao remained calm in the face of the other party's predicament:
"Since its Series B funding round in 2019, SecondMind has not accepted any new investments. Moreover, SecondMind's valuation in the 2019 Series B funding round was 100 million US dollars, but it only raised 24 million US dollars."
"Due to the impact of the pandemic in the past two years, the price of chip foundry has been rising year by year, and labor costs are also increasing. I wonder how long SecondMind can survive without investment?"
"Meanwhile, Graphcore, another English AI chip company, received a large amount of funding last year, while DeepMind has been backed by Google since 2014."
"How will Secondmind survive? The revenue from its partnership with Mazda is limited and probably cannot support the company's further development."
England is a major center for AI research, and multinational giants have been continuously investing in English AI companies for years, but Chinese companies are rarely seen.
HP announced its acquisition of Autonomy. Amazon acquired True Knowledge; in 2014, Google acquired DeepMind, Dark Blue Labs, and Vision Factory, Apple acquired VocalIQ, Microsoft acquired SwiftKey, and Twitter acquired MagicPony.
The companies listed after that are all in the field of artificial intelligence in England, not just AI chips.
“We have sufficient funds, and other investment institutions have expressed their willingness to participate in SecondMind’s Series C funding round.”
"We will soon be moving forward with SecondMind's Series C funding round, and we would very much welcome giants like Kechuang Bio to participate."
They welcome investment, but do not want to be acquired.
Li Miaomiao was very skeptical. "No one has continued to invest in you for the past two years, but as soon as we say we want to make an acquisition, people come to invest?"
On second thought, she remembered that Cheng Gang had told her on the way that Goldman Sachs and IDG also wanted to participate in SecondMind's investment.
"Are IDG and Goldman Sachs interested in investing in you?"
The other party nodded: "Since you already know, there's nothing more I can hide from you."
"IDG and Goldman Sachs have each signed share transfer memorandums with our shareholders, and the two investment institutions have indicated that they will help us launch our Series C fundraising as soon as possible."
"IDG and Goldman Sachs will lead the investment."
Li Miaomiao thought to herself that these investment institutions were indeed shameless. They acted much more decisively than the others after learning that Kechuang Bio was going to acquire Secondmind.
In this respect, Kechuang Bio still has many shortcomings. If it were Tencent, they would have done this job without anyone noticing.
The first meeting ended abruptly, and Li Miaomiao felt she needed to carefully review the specifics of the matter.
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