I’m at the Bay Area Semiconductor Expo in Shenzhen. A company called Qiyunfang, a subsidiary of 新凯来 (SiCarrier), just unveiled two fully domestic EDA software platforms: one for schematic and one for PCB design. Yet another Made in China 2025 success.
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For context, EDA (electronic design automation) is the software backbone of chip and circuit design. Trump 2.0 tried to cut China off from it in March, forcing Cadence, Synopsys, and Siemens to halt China sales. But just weeks later, Washington quietly reversed course and lifted the ban. Then last week, Trump said the U.S. will impose export controls on “any and all critical software,” so assume EDA again. Turns out a secret team in Shenzhen had already created a solution: every core component, every bit of IP, all built domestically.
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The theory in Washington was simple: if China can’t use U.S. EDA tools, it can’t design competitive chips or even advanced boards. It was meant to be another choke point on China’s entire hardware ecosystem.

Oct 15, 2025 · 8:09 AM UTC

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The numbers they showed this morning are aggressive: ~30% better performance and up to 40% shorter hardware dev cycles compared to industry benchmarks. Those are vendor claims, so have to see what developers think, but they said they already have >20,000 users. This will be especially huge for fast-moving industries like EVs, phones, drones, robots, etc.
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x.com/xu159411209/status/197… The hype around this is enormous because at a press conference last week, Shenzhen’s Development and Reform Commission chief Guo Ziping teased that SiCarrier would unveil “multiple unexpected surprises” from its subsidiaries at the expo. Shenzhen friends who couldn’t attend today are very upset! People are shoving to get SiCarrier pamphlets, hoping they’ll be collectors items one day… I got mine!
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Western media probably won’t touch this, or they’ll dismiss it as hype. But the reality is that Shenzhen now has a working domestic EDA stack running on Chinese OS, databases, and middleware… another complete failure of U.S. protectionist export controls. China’s engineers are moving so much faster than outsiders think, and they’re doing it right here, in the middle of the supply chain that builds the world’s hardware.
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There’s been a lot of speculation about who’s actually behind Qiyunfang. My friends have friends and former colleagues they suspect work there, but they know not to even ask. It was founded in July 2023, wholly owned by SiCarrier, a company itself rooted in Huawei’s old 2012 Lab “Starlight” engineering group and backed by the Shenzhen Government. This is day one of the expo. Let’s see what tomorrow’s surprise is.
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