My understanding is that Friedcat's name was Jiang Xinyu.  https://news.8btc.com/tracking-friedcat-after-his-missing-in-2015  (I especially like how Ayn Rand is spelled in it...)

Jihan knew about my private communication with Asicminer.  Unless I misunderstood his explanation, he worked with asicminer before he started bitmain.

I thought this was public knowledge, but searches aren't turning up one thing... unfortunately "asicminer" is essentially ungooglable because it's a generic term.

The above link says about Xie Jian, "He invested more than 1000 bitcoin and bought 11,000 FC shares, which made him one of the board members of Bitfountain." Another article says about Jihan Wu: "Wu Jihan and his friend Crazy Xiaoqiang (web writer, first-generation bitcoin speculator) each bought 15,000 shares and 12,500 shares of the roast cat company's virtual stock.".  So this suggests that Jihan Wu would have been a board member?

Yang Zuoxing, the former bitmain engineer that they were suing for making a rival chip claims to have done design for asicminer. He might be the right person to ask if someone really wants the straight dope.