Bitmain co-founder’s AI chip venture blacklisted by US

The United States has added Sophgo Technologies, the IA flea company belonging to the Bitmain co-founder, Zhan Ketuan, to its commercial black list.

The United States has put Sophgo Technologies black list, the IA flea company founded by the co-founder of Bitmain, Zhan Ketuan, fearing that his chips would be found in Huawei products, thus avoiding sanctions.

According to a Financial Times reportUS officials believe Sophgo “acted at the request of Beijing” to strengthen the manufacturing capacities of China fleas. The report also mentions a difficult period for Bitmain when Zhan focused on IA fleas, causing internal difficulties.

The problems started when Zhan transferred his resources to the development of IA fleas. His desire to go beyond cryptographic material caused an internal conflict, notes the report.

“We are a business focused on high performance processors. We started with cryptocurrency processors and now we are entering artificial intelligence, this is a new area of ​​application but not a complete pivot.

Zhan said during a rally in Beijing in 2017.

The black list Sophgo places in a difficult situation, cutting it from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the world’s leading manufacturer of flea. Some fear that this can also affect Bitmain. TSMC, however, insists that it is fully in accordance with global regulations, the report indicates.

The path of Zhan started in 2013 when he joined Wu Jihan, a crypto fan, to create Bitmain. The company quickly dominated the Bitcoin mining equipment, reaching $ 2.5 billion in income in 2017. Bitmain also owns BTC.com and Antpool, which are among the largest Bitcoin mining pools.

In June 2018, Wu announced that Bitmain was Consider an IPO To allow first investors to collect. The company then finalized its pre-time registration of a billion dollars with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in August and filed its IPO in September. However, in March 2019, the request for Introduction on Bitmain’s stock exchange to Hong Kong expired, six months after his deposit, investors would have worried about the drop in the value of Bitcoin.