Wudaokou welcomes and sends off people: quietly becoming a “focusing area for AI companies”?

Nuclei are as heavy as cows, and their collision creates new states.

This "collision of bulls" sculpture is not only a landmark of Tsinghua Science Park, but also a symbol of the innovation and vitality of Wudaokou as the center of the universe.

In 1994, the Tsinghua Science Park project was officially launched, Huaqing Garden was completed in 2000, Dongsheng Building was completed in 2004, Sohu Network Building was inaugurated, and Zhongguancun Intelligent Manufacturing Street opened in 2016...

In this, the only place in Beijing that dares to be called the "center of the universe", Google, NetEase, VIA China Chip, and many innovative companies that followed have created a whole new universe with their own strength.

Who has achieved success in the center of the universe where every inch of land is worth a lot of money?

25 years ago, Tsinghua Science Park was officially completed, and the first batch of student entrepreneurs were established as the first batch of residents. Since then, most of the companies settled in Tsinghua Science Park are Tsinghua students or young entrepreneurs with a close relationship with Tsinghua.

Sun Jiming, the "first chairman" of Tsinghua Science Park, said in an interview with Tsinghua People that after referring to the models of mature science parks such as Silicon Valley abroad, and based on Tsinghua's characteristics and advantages in technology and talent, Tsinghua Science Park was finally positioned in three areas: first, technological innovation; second, the incubation of high-tech enterprises; and third, the cultivation of innovative technology and management talents.

Take Chinese Online as an example. It started here and was one of the first batch of enterprises to enter the park. Tong Zhilei, the founder of Chinese Online, once mentioned, "The Internet entrepreneurship wave was very hot at that time. We had the passion to start a business right after graduation. It just happened to coincide with the timing of Tsinghua Science Park's open source, so we naturally chose this place. So far (2014), Tsinghua Science Park has always been a shareholder of Chinese Online."

In addition, another company, Digital Video, settled in Tsinghua Entrepreneurship Park because of the teacher's kindness; and Tsinghua Entrepreneurship Park provided a shelter for the company's development, from the initial venture capital investment in Digital Video to the recruitment of talents for the company.

Wang Wanchun, the founder of Digital Video, once mentioned a profound detail in an interview. He said, "At the beginning of the business, in order to get the first order, the humble company with only 10 people had to borrow the director's office of Tsinghua Pioneer Park to receive visiting customers."

Similarly, Qiu Hongyun, a Tsinghua student who has started two businesses in Tsinghua Science Park and the founder of Lightspeed Vision, said when talking about the reason why he chose Tsinghua Science Park for both businesses, he said that the first time he started a business, he entered the science park with the help of his teacher, and the second time he chose it on his own initiative, probably because of the geographical relationship. It is very close to Tsinghua, and it seems to have inherited the spirit of Tsinghua and has the atmosphere of Tsinghua.

It is reported that when Qiu Hongyun founded the first Lightspeed Vision, from company registration to project application, all the system services were provided by Tsinghua Science Park. It is worth mentioning that in 2011, the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission opened a number of research projects, and the relevant person in charge of the Science and Technology Park directly found Lightspeed Vision and helped them successfully obtain a one-year project with a funding of 800,000 yuan.

Of course, when talking about Tsinghua Science Park, one cannot help but mention Sohu Network Building. However, even though there is a big sign of "Sohu Network Building" hanging on the Tsinghua Science Park, most people in this office building will still ask the taxi driver, "Master, please stop at Sogou Building."

Indeed, it is not difficult to find here that in Sohu's product matrix in recent years - real estate, Changyou equity, search, portal and video, except for the growth of its successfully incubated Sogou business, the market position in other fields has not increased but decreased, and Sogou has even surpassed Sohu itself to some extent.

Sohu Network Building is located 300 meters south of the east gate of Tsinghua University, occupying the golden corner and silver edge of the southeast of Tsinghua Science Park. It belongs to the Zhongguancun office building business circle and is located in Wudaokou, Haidian, which is in the upper wind and water. To the east, it is across the street from the famous chain supermarket Yichu Lotus, which is headquartered in Thailand.

As the saying goes, it is better to buy a building early than to do well in the main business. This saying is especially applicable to Sohu. Although buying a building to preserve value was not a new thing in the era of "no shortage of money" in the Internet, it is rare to see a company like Sohu with a sharp drop in market value and office buildings becoming almost the most valuable asset.

According to available information, in 2006, Sohu used 30% of its cash reserves at the time to purchase part of the Beijing Weixin International Building (now Sohu Network Building) located in the core area of ​​Wudaokou, together with the naming rights of the building and 10 parking spaces, involving a total amount of US$277 million. According to industry insiders, the price of this building is now around 3.4 billion yuan (US$500 million).

Later facts proved that in the early days of Internet companies burning money, it was very wise for Zhang Chaoyang to use huge amounts of money to buy buildings to preserve their value, because these buildings have become the most valuable assets of Sohu, a declining aristocrat.

In recent years, there have been many voices criticizing Sohu, such as "Sohu has experienced negative growth, and the most valuable thing is the Sohu building..." Data shows that in 2018, Sohu's annual revenue was US$1.88 billion and its loss was US$237 million. Today, its total market value is only US$830 million.

Who has been sent away by the center of the universe that attracts and sends people?

Of course, in that era when Internet companies were making waves, one thing that cannot be ignored is Google.

It is understood that before moving into the Kejian Building in Tsinghua Science Park in 2006, Google China had worked briefly in the Xinhua Insurance Building outside Jianguomen. On September 4 of that year, Google China announced the opening of the 14,000-square-meter Kejian Building, officially moving into Zhongguancun and spending a turbulent decade here.

Kejian Building has 10 floors in total and can accommodate thousands of people working at the same time. The interior decoration style is also in line with the "Google style". The first floor has the famous "Google Canteen", and the other floors are divided into "Lounges", "Coffee Bars" and "Gyms". Each floor also has massage chairs, as well as a continuous supply of snacks and fruits.

At the top of the Kejian Building, there is still a LOGO sign with the words "Google China - Google", but it is still the old wording from before 2015.

According to reports, one detail is that after Google's LOGO was changed to a new word in 2015, the official did not change the main LOGO for the Chinese region at the same time. On the landmark outside the lobby door on the first floor, the refreshed LOGO only has "Google" and no longer has the words "China" and "Google".

According to an insider of Google China at the time, after Google's search service withdrew from the mainland, Kejian Building always maintained a R&D engineer team and a sales team of over 100 people, but the size of the staff and team was much smaller than before the search service withdrew.

Google China's new Beijing headquarters is now close to the North Fourth Ring Road, further south than the Kejian Building, but in terms of straight-line distance, the two addresses are only 1 kilometer apart. It is worth noting that Google China's new Beijing headquarters, Rongke Information Building, only rents the 3rd and 4th floors, and the office area is much smaller.

Some former Google China R&D engineers also joked that this move was to say goodbye to the "past" - after all, too many things that can be recorded in history have happened in the Kejian Building in the past ten years, and they are all relatively heavy. Perhaps they also hope to change to a new place and get a new atmosphere.

But the official reason given by Google China was that they wanted a more spacious office and more stylish decoration. So, by 2016, Google ended its ten-year journey in Tsinghua Science Park and began to step down from the altar in China.

There is an old saying in Beijing that goes "upwind and upwater". The north of Beijing is a place with a variety of weather conditions and has always been considered a Feng Shui treasure land. In addition to the concentration of colleges and universities, many Internet high-tech companies have all set up their offices in Wudaokou.

NetEase CEO Ding Lei once said: "People are NetEase's most valuable asset. The 'people' here include NetEase employees and users. It is precisely because we are based on 'people' and serve 'people' that we provide employees with such home-like services. We hope that NetEase employees can work here with dignity and create a new life of their own here."

At the end of 2015, NetEase's Beijing R&D center occupied nearly 150 acres of office park in Beijing's Zhongguancun Software Park.

It is understood that the new park office was built by NetEase Group itself, with excellent office conditions, providing one-stop fully-equipped office services for all NetEase employees in Beijing.