Bitmain has launched its ‘personnel optimization program’ by the end of 2019. At the end of last week, Jihan Wu, CEO of Bitmain held a meeting to ask all department managers to submit the ‘optimization list’. Bitmain will hold its annual meeting on January 17, and the optimization plan is expected to be completed before the annual meeting.

Bitmain insiders said that at present, the company is operating normally with healthy cash flow. Personnel cutting is only a “weight-loss plan” to deal with the halving, moreover, it is also a corrective action to the original chairman’s (Micree Zhan) business expansion at will.

The reason for Bitmain’s personnel cutting is that the crypto mining industry is facing the pressure of bitcoin halving, and the company needs to simplify the organization for the winter, focus on the main business and maintain the leading edge in technology.

Compared with its competitor Whatsminer, Bitmain hires more than 1000 people as the number of employees is relatively redundant. Industry insiders said that “the trend of bitcoin is not clear at present. The bitcoin halving in May is a huge uncertainty for miner manufacturers.

After Wu regained control of Bitmain, he started a round of salary increase for all employees, and most of the employees apart from the management have got about 20% increased salary. After that, Bitmain held a customer conference in Chengdu in which Wu Bitmain launched three strategies to lower the entry barrier for miner buyers, which is actually a double shot. Because this option product can not only reduce the psychological threshold for customers to buy mining machines, teach miners to use financial tools to hedge risks, but also effectively promote the new company Matrixport to the public.

Besides, Antminer S17 series are being shipped on a large scale to replace S9, which is close to the shutdown price. Bitmian employees disclosed that AI business had already found a good joint venture, but was vetoed by the original chairman Micree Zhan, which was one of the reasons for the personnel cutting. Source said that Bitmain’s AI business will become the focus of optimization because it cannot generate profits. At present, the miner business is in full push on and will be relatively safe to maintain the leading edge of technology in the industry.

Another Chinese crypto mining giant Canaan disclosed in New Year’s Day speech that their second-generation AI chip K510 still adopts the upgraded RISC-V multi-core heterogeneous processor architecture. In addition to greatly improving the original KPU, a new self-developed computing module GNNE is added. On the other hand, the second-generation chip is optimized for 5G communication environment, equipped with multi-channel HD and in-depth camera interface, it will be applied in the fields of smart retail, ADAS assisted driving and finance.