Megvii CEO says US ban will hit its supply of servers and could disturb IPO but it is ‘ready for the fight’
- Megvii was among 28 Chinese public security bureaus and companies put on a US trade blacklist last week over alleged human rights violations
“The specific impact is that we can't directly buy products subject to US export regulations, such as x86 servers and GPUs (graphics processing units) made in the country,” said Yin Qi, company co-founder and chief executive in an internal letter to staff on Monday, a copy of which was obtained by the SCMP. Nevertheless, Yin said Megvii is “well-equipped for the fight”.
Yin did not rail against the US, which has become involved in an escalating tech war with Beijing, in Monday’s internal letter. Instead he said the industry had “enjoyed the innovative fruits yielded by the US for four decades and had never really had a sense of crisis [before now].” He added that “Chinese companies hadn’t done well in core technology and fundamental research” and had been “besotted by an illusory cyber prosperity for the past 20 years.”
A spokesperson for Megvii declined to comment on the internal letter.
So-called x86 servers are a family of instruction set architectures, initially developed by Intel on the 8086 microprocessor. Although several domestic names such as Inspur and Sugon provide such servers, they largely rely on patents licensed by American electronic giants Intel and AMD.
In the case of GPUs, domestic suppliers have so far been unable to compete with US firms such as AMD and Nvidia in the commercial market.