Web Excursions 2022-05-07

Arm 中国动荡史：夹缝中一家合资公司的命运

• 4 月 29 日上午，软银、Arm 宣布，安谋已依法完成工商变更，吴雄昂不再担任安谋董事长、CEO 和法人代表，并任命深圳清华大学研究院副院长刘仁辰和软银愿景基金管理合伙人陈恂担任新的联席 CEO。

• 收购 Arm 符合孙正义的雄心：投资未来社会的基础设施。

  • 软银最终在 2016 年 9 月以 320 亿美元现金全资收购了 Arm，

  • 为获得购买 Arm 的足够现金，软银减持了部分阿里巴巴股票。

• 这之后，在吴雄昂的推动、孙正义的支持下，全新的合资公司安谋科技（中国）在 2018 年成立，它不再像 Arm 中国那样是 Arm 全资控股的子公司。

  • 安谋由中资持股 51%，Arm 持股 49%，吴雄昂担任董事长兼 CEO。

  • 安谋拥有 Arm IP 在中国大陆的独家授权。

• 孙正义在促成安谋成立时，即定下了让安谋独立上市的计划，

  • 日本媒体报道的一份投资文件显示，安谋曾计划最早于 2021 年在中国资本市场独立上市。

  • 这会为软银的投资带来额外回报。安谋还会在销售 Arm IP 业务之外拓展自研 IP，

  • 这使吴雄昂得以实现他看到的中国芯片市场大机会

• 吴雄昂 1968 年出生在中国南京，高中随家人移民美国，在英特尔做芯片架构工程师，互联网热潮期前往硅谷创业，2004 年时团队被并入 Arm，两年后被派往 Arm 中国负责销售工作。

• 2016 年 9 月，随着软银集团全资收购 Arm，Arm 全球管理层原本的态度没那么重要了，说了算的是新老板孙正义。

• 孙正义、Arm 和吴雄昂达成了行动共识，合资公司的具体方案被敲定如下：

  • 安谋总估值为 100 亿元人民币，

  • Arm 持股 49%。中方投资人以资金入股，合计持股 51%。

  • 其中之一是持股 36% 的厚朴基金，据知情人士透露，其出资人有深圳国资；另一中资股东是持股 15% 的安创投资，出资人包括一些中国系统软件、终端公司，由吴雄昂担任管理人。

  • 两个中方股东为一致行动人，以保证中资控制合资公司。

  • 安谋同时为团队设立了 13.3% 的期权，未来会从各股东的股比中划出。

  • 安谋将拥有 Arm IP 在中国大陆的独家授权，即大陆客户只能通过安谋购买 Arm IP，且安谋可基于 Arm 技术架构进行自主研发；Arm 则拥有安谋自研 IP 的海外独家授权。

• 经过一年的法律流程，安谋最终于 2018 年 4 月正式成立。

• 特殊的运营目标和与之匹配的股权设计，让安谋获得了独立发展的身份，但也为矛盾埋下种子——

  • 在这家利益方众多、诉求各异的公司中，没有任何一方同时拥有股权和经营上的控制力。

• 安谋成立的 2018 年刚好踩在了中美关系的分水岭。在那之前，芯片行业是全球化合作的典范

• 安谋夺权风波的公开爆发，是 2020 年 6 月。

• 这之前半个月，美国升级了对华为的禁令，新禁令将在同年 9 月生效。

• 2020 年 6 月 10 日上午 10 点，Arm 发布声明，称已在 6 月 4 日召开安谋董事会，以 7:1 投票赞成罢免吴雄昂，因为他的行为与安谋有 “利益冲突”，并已任命了两位临时联席 CEO。厚朴在这次董事会上支持了 Arm。

  • 后来的报道称，Arm 不满吴雄昂的具体原因是，他在 2019 年以个人身份成立投资基金 Alphatecture，

  • 该基金利用 Arm 的行业地位募资，并投资了部分安谋旗下加速器的项目。董事会被蒙在鼓里。

  • Alphatecture 曾在 2019 年投资恒玄科技 1.27 亿元人民币，占股 3.2%，这家公司也是安谋的客户。恒玄在 2020 年底上市，目前市值约 140 亿元人民币。

• 中国市场增长快、需求大，Arm 管理层怀疑钱分少了。

  • 从 2019 年底起，Arm 要求吴雄昂提供安谋的客户和运营信息以更细致地了解销售情况，

  • 但吴雄昂认为这超越了 Arm 作为安谋股东的知情权，没有同意。

• 主动出击的 Arm 理应有更多准备，但他们并没有提前控制安谋的公章。

  • 没有公章就无法进行工商变更，这使 Arm 失去了实际接管安谋的机会。

• 罢免风波后的近两年里，这场夺权之战进入了一种僵持状态。

  • 安谋在这期间仍在如常运转，在去年更新了使命、愿景、价值观，对外发布了全新战略，升级了自研 IP；

  • 它越来越像一家独立的创业公司。吴雄昂控制着实际运营。

• 2020 年第一次夺权风波后，Arm 任命的两位新联席 CEO 曾挨个拜访安谋的客户，告诉他们再与吴雄昂合作有法律风险，不排除以后断供。有人当面质疑：“我们跟他们做了十几年生意，你是谁？”

• 第一批找 Arm 中国购买全套 IP 做大芯片的本土公司包括一批当时主要做 MP3 和复读机主控芯片的公司

  • 为推进与这些中国公司的合作，吴雄昂称他向总部争取了此前不向中国芯片公司开放的 IP 源代码权限。

  • 公司法务认为有风险：中国知识产权保护不严，给一个 100 人的小公司源代码，万一他们破产了，这批人会不会拿着代码跑了？

  • 但当时还没退休的 Arm 创始人之一兼总裁都铎·布朗（Tudor Brown）很支持，Arm 过去就是靠支撑创业公司做大而发展的。

• Arm 是通过不断壮大客户列表和开发者数量，自己争取到了在安卓生态里的地位。

  • 移动互联网发展迅速、体量庞大的中国市场，在这个过程中扮演了重要角色。

• Arm 中国团队做的第三件重要的事是把 Arm CPU IP 推广到一些手机、平板之外的终端。

  • 支持内容供应商和芯片厂商合作推出了智能电视盒子。

  • 当时谷歌官方并不支持手机、平板之外的安卓系统，Arm 中国就自己找一些第三方软件商，把安卓移植到了电视

• 2010 年起，Arm 中国通过支持华为海思自研基站芯片，进入了企业级市场。

• Arm 中国的生态建设动作还有：免费开放一些 IP 给高校用作教研，使学生没毕业时就会用 Arm；2014 年开始做安创加速器扶持创业企业，地平线、黑芝麻、西井科技等都是加速器成员。

• 近 2 年的僵局后，触发安谋最新工商变更的导火索是 Arm 的资本变化。

  • 2020 年 9 月以来，软银一直在谋求将 Arm 以超过 600 亿美元的价格卖给 GPU 巨头英伟达。

  • 这笔交易遭到各国政府和大部分芯片公司反对，在今年 2 月 8 日正式中止。

  • 软银随即寻求让 Arm 单独上市，获得 600 亿美元以上的估值。

• 软银亟需通过 Arm 上市变现、提振业绩。

  • 为讲好上市故事，必须解决安谋的纷争

  • 软银有两种选择，一是和吴雄昂合作，吴雄昂的筹码是配合 Arm  上市；

  • 二是换掉吴雄昂，软银的筹码是对 Arm IP 的掌握。

• 今年 3 月，Arm 和软银已在推进将 Arm 持有的安谋股权转让给一家由软银、Arm 共同控制的特殊目的公司。

  • 有媒体称，正是这次股权转让，促使相关政府在工商变更前一周转变了态度，选择支持软银。

  • 股权转让后，“Arm 会像对待其它购买了 IP 的客户那样对待安谋”。

• 认为即使软银主导安谋，也不会影响中国公司对 Arm IP 的继续使用，因为软银不可能放弃中国市场，更根本的问题仍是中美关系：“Arm 永远受美国牵制，它在美股上市后更是如此。”

• 安谋夺权斗争的更直接影响是，安谋过去四年重点投入的自研业务变得前途未卜。

  • 在 2020 年底更新了自研思路，明确了 “双轮驱动” 新战略：一轮是继续销售、支持 Arm IP；另一轮是做 “定制化 + 平台化” 自研系列产品。

  • 安谋自研产品主要面向智能物联网市场，这本是孙正义希望 Arm 大力拓展的方向，但进展不顺

  • 在物联网 IP 上，安谋和 Arm 有一定产品竞争关系。

  • 安谋的一系列变化被外部总结为 “去 Arm 化” 。但安谋目前的核心价值仍来自 Arm IP 的独家授权。

Apple Together: Thoughts on Office-Bound Work

• our vision of the future of work is growing further and further apart from that of the executive team.

  • You have characterized the decision for the Hybrid Working Pilot as being about combining the “need to commune in-person” and the value of flexible work.

  • But in reality, it does not recognize flexible work and is only driven by fear.

    • Fear of the future of work, fear of worker autonomy, fear of losing control

• First, there’s “Serendipity”.

  • [which] comes from bumping into colleagues when everyone is in the same place.

    • Except we are not all in one place.

    • We don’t have just one office, we have many.

    • And often, our functional organizations have their own office buildings, in which employees from other orgs cannot work.

  • This siloed structure is part of our culture.

    • It doesn’t take luck to overcome the communication silos and make cross-functional connections that are vital for Apple to function,

    • it takes intentionality.

    • We need to be able to reach out to each other intentionally, and have the chance to do so.

  • you choose to keep us all in separate siloed Slack workspaces and try to prevent us from talking to each other

    • you have even made it impossible to create shared community spaces where serendipity could have happened, online and remotely

    • there is a “temporary hold on approving any new clubs” or shared public Slack channels

• Second, there’s “in-person collaboration”.

  • for many of us, this is not something we need every week, often not even every month, definitely not every day

  • What is also required for creativity and excellent work for many of us is time for deep thought.

    • But being in an office often does not enable this, especially not many of our newer offices, with their open floor plans,

  • with everyone working “remotely” it was much easier to reach out to colleagues in other offices.

• Third, there’s flexibility.

  • Three fixed days in the office and the two WFH days broken apart by an office day, is almost no flexibility at all

  • The Hybrid Working Pilot is not an increase in flexibility,

    • it is a smokescreen and often a step back in flexibility for many of our teams.

• Fourth, there is the commute.

  • commuting to the office, without an actual need to be there,

  • is a huge waste of time as well as both mental and physical resources

• Fifth, there’s diversity.

  • our current policies requiring everyone to relocate to the office their team happens to be based in,

  • and being in the office at least 3 fixed days of the week, will change the makeup of our workforce.

  • It will make Apple younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied,

  • in short, it will lead to privileges deciding who can work for Apple, not who’d be the best fit.

• Sixth, the most important reason.

  • It’s bad for Apple, both the employees and our products, and ultimately our customers.

  • We tell all of our customers how great our products are for remote work, yet, we ourselves, cannot use them to work remotely?

    • How can we expect our customers to take that seriously?

    • How can we understand what problems of remote work need solving in our products, if we don’t live it?

• we delivered on our promises and continue to do so.

  • We were incredibly flexible and resilient and found new ways to do our work, despite not being able to go to an office in many cases.

• as Steve said: “It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do.

  • We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.”

• Here we are, the smart people that you hired,

  • and we are telling you what to do: Please get out of our way,

  • there is no one-size-fits-all solution, let us decide how we work best,

  • and let us do the best work of our lives

Bitcoin Mixers: How Do They Work and Why Are They Used?

• The Bitcoin blockchain is entirely public.

  • For some, that is a core feature, not a problem.

  • But for those who need a little more anonymity, the public nature of the Bitcoin blockchain is a huge privacy flaw.

• There are ways of keeping bitcoin transactions entirely private – to obscure who sends what to whom.

  • One of the most popular methods is to use a bitcoin mixer, also known as a tumbler.

  • These are tools that jumble up an amount of bitcoin in private pools before spitting them out to their intended recipients.

• The idea is that, by shuffling bitcoin through a black box, it’s difficult to work out that person A sent 10 bitcoins to person B.

  • All a public explorer will show is that person A sent some bitcoin to a mixer, as did a dozen other people,

  • and that person B received some bitcoin from a mixer, as did a dozen other people.

• There are two main types of bitcoin mixers:

  • Centralized mixers: like Blender.io.

  • Decentralized mixers: such as Wasabi and JoinMarket.

• Centralized mixers are companies that will accept your bitcoin and send back different bitcoins for a fee.

  • While they offer an easy solution for tumbling bitcoin, they also still present a privacy challenge,

  • as while the links between “incoming” and “outgoing” bitcoin will not be public, the mixer itself will still have a record that connects the transactions.

• Decentralized mixers employ protocols such as CoinJoin to fully obscure transactions via either a coordinated or peer-to-peer method.

  • Basically, the protocol allows a large group of users to join together an amount of bitcoin (i.e. 100 people want to mix 1 bitcoin each) and then redistribute it so everyone gets 1 bitcoin back,

  • but no one can tell who got what or where it came from.

• Problems with using mixers

  • It’s unlikely that someone else in the mixer sent the exact amount of bitcoin as you, minus the tumbler’s fee.

    • If a law enforcement agency knows the address used by its first suspect,

    • and if the second suspect is the only one to have received a little less of a specific amount,

    • it’s not going to be too hard to reconnect the flow of money.

  • Some exchanges don’t allow mixed bitcoin to enter or leave exchanges.

    • Since exchanges can identify mixers, they label mixed bitcoin tainted.

  • not all mixing services are legitimate, and some are far less effective at obscuring financial transactions than others.

• Are bitcoin mixers illegal?

  • depends on which jurisdiction you are based in.

  • In February 2021, then-U.S. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Benczkowski said that using mixers to hide crypto transactions “is a crime.”

  • [ Note: On May 6, 2022, the U.S. Treasury Department sanctioned a cryptocurrency mixing service for the first time, citing evidence that it was used to launder funds stolen by North Korean state-backed hackers. ]

  • New anti-money laundering rules, like the Financial Action Task Force’s “travel rule” and the European Union’s AMLD-5 directive

• Alternatives to bitcoin mixers

  • chain-hopping: After hacks, criminals often siphon funds through lots of exchanges using accounts created with cheaply bought or stolen identities.

    • relies on the fact it takes law enforcement a long time to force exchanges to shut down accounts;

    • plus, it’s tricky for exchanges to spot dodgy accounts in the first place if they have already passed through know-your-customer (KYC) procedures.

  • To obscure the flow of funds, Monero uses one-time use "stealth" addresses and mixes genuine transaction signatures with decoys.

  • Zcash offers optional private transactions that rely on zero-knowledge proofs, which don’t share transaction information.