By Ian King, Bloomberg
For more than three decades, Lip-Bu Tan invested in the Chinese economic boom, placing the kind of no-brainer bets that enriched venture capitalists and fund managers around the world and across the US.
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He set up a venture firm called Walden International based in San Francisco that pumped more than $5 billion into over 600 companies. More than 100 of those investments were made in China, including deals with once-obscure startups such as Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. — today China’s largest chipmaker — where he served on the board for a decade and a half.
In recent years, as US-China tensions escalated, Washington increasingly restricted Beijing’s access to advanced technology and placed tighter limits on the ability of US companies to do business there. And Tan’s efforts to distance himself from Chinese investments accelerated with his appointment at Intel Corp. in March, when he agreed to divest his holdings there, according to a person familiar with the arrangement.
That hasn’t stopped US lawmakers — and, now, Donald Trump — from holding Tan’s past Chinese affiliations against him. The US president called the executive “highly conflicted” in a social media post and urged him to resign.
Intel has said Tan and the board are “deeply committed to advancing US national and economic security interests.” Late on Thursday, Tan said he’s got the full backing of the company’s board, responding for the first time to Trump. “We are engaging with the Administration to address the matters that have been raised and ensure they have the facts,” he said in a letter to staff posted on Intel’s website.
Here’s what we know about Tan’s business dealings in China.
Walden
He started work at a venture capital firm in the 1980s called Walden Ventures, where he helped create a spinoff named Walden International that focused on overseas opportunities.
Tan, a Mandarin speaker born in Malaysia, helped the company make investments all over East Asia, including China. He pushed some of Walden’s funds into the then-unfashionable area of chip investing. Most venture capitalists had moved away from the industry, figuring that it was impossible to challenge giants such as Intel with startup money. But Tan played those odds.
Today, the executive is still chairman of Walden International. And he’s the founding managing partner at Walden Catalyst Ventures, which focuses on investments in the US, Europe and Israel. He also serves in that role at another venture fund, Celesta Global Capital.
Tan and Walden have faced scrutiny for China-related investments before. In 2023, the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party sent Walden a letter expressing concerns and seeking more information on the types of companies and amount of investments made there.
SMIC
Headquartered in Shanghai, SMIC was founded in 2000 as an early attempt to bring advanced chip-making to China.
Walden International was one of the big investors when the startup raised $630 million from a group of venture firms in 2003. Tan was a director on SMIC’s board until 2018.
The Chinese company, whose customers at one time included Qualcomm Inc., is attempting to break into the outsourced chip production business dominated by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.
In 2020, that effort took a serious blow when the US Commerce Department put SMIC on the so-called entity list, citing ties with the Chinese military. That means businesses need licenses to supply the Chinese company with technology. The move effectively cut it off from crucial US vendors. Today, it’s a key partner to major Chinese sector players including Huawei Technologies Co.
Cadence
Tan stepped out of the venture world and joined the chip industry full-time when he became interim head of San Jose, California-based Cadence Design Systems Inc. in 2008. The executive, who had previously served on the board, went on to take the permanent CEO job the next year. He stayed in the role until 2021, when he transitioned to executive chairman, and is widely credited with restoring the company’s fortunes.
In late July of this year, the Department of Justice announced a plea deal that cost Cadence more than $100 million in fines. Employees at Cadence’s China unit allegedly hid the name of a customer — the National University of Defense Technology — from internal compliance in order to keep supplying it. That organization had been put on the Department of Commerce’s blacklist in 2015. The Chinese university was one of a group of supercomputer operators there that had conducted simulations of nuclear explosions, the DOJ said.
Cadence got a 20% reduction of the statutory maximum fine because of its partial cooperation with the investigation, according to the DOJ’s statement, which didn’t mention Tan.
Still, his connection to the company was cited this week by US Senator Tom Cotton, who wrote to Intel Chairman Frank Yeary questioning whether what happened at Cadence under Tan’s tenure makes him fit for his current job.
Current Status
Tan spent time on the boards of other Chinese companies, such as Advanced Micro-Fabrication Equipment Inc. But he doesn’t, according to Bloomberg data, currently serve on a board of any company based in that country.
Though Walden International has invested in more than 100 Chinese companies over the years, that involvement has been scaled back, according to PitchBook. Walden International, Walden Catalyst Ventures and Celesta now just have stakes in a handful of companies based in China, including Hong Kong, the site shows.
–With assistance from Jessica Sui, Debby Wu and Vlad Savov.
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