The verge of bankruptcy! Major Russian chip manufacturers auction assets

According to the latest reports from Russian media, the country’s CPU manufacturing company Baikal Electronics is on the verge of bankruptcy and is preparing to auction its assets. It is currently selling intellectual property assets worth US$5 million.

It is reported that Russian CPU manufacturer Baikal is part of T-Platforms, a company specializing in ultra-large-scale computing. It can be said that it is a "wind vane" for the Russian market to encourage independent production of domestic CPUs, because the company has done a lot of work on its Baikal-M series of products.

Baikal even tried integrating Baikal CPU into laptops, but such laptops failed to gain acceptance in the industry. A recent benchmark test of the company's Baikal-S processor showed that it was unable to beat products launched by Intel and Huawei back in 2019, suggesting that the chipmaker's approach is "outdated."

It has been previously reported that Baikal Electronics aims to move towards ASICs for the artificial intelligence industry, which may be one of the reasons why its CEO sees asset sales as an opportunity. Perhaps the company has decided to shift its focus entirely to artificial intelligence, which is the right move given the industry’s current “AI gold rush.”