Chapter 1 Evening

It was a little after eleven o'clock at night.

Su Yehao, having just finished a video conference, sat in front of his computer, dozing off. After waiting patiently for a while, he finally received an email from Larry Page.

The other party mentioned that Peter Briger, one of the co-founders of PayPal, had a crazy entrepreneurial plan.

If Larry Page considered it crazy, it was probably interesting.

After all, he had been the CEO of Google for so long. If he were willing to sell his Google shares, his net worth would be a couple hundred million dollars. Having been exposed to all sorts of entrepreneurial projects, his judgment probably wouldn't be too bad.

Since it wasn't his native language and involved a lot of professional vocabulary, Su Yehao looked up some words before finally understanding the email completely, leaving him stunned.

In short.

After PayPal was acquired by the Kaomoji Group last year, Peter Briger, who had worked with Elon Musk, received about nine million dollars and attempted a second venture.

At the beginning of the year, several super coders who graduated from Stanford University's computer science department were organized by Peter Briger, who had left PayPal, to start a small company that resembled a studio.

After the 11/10 incident last year, a conflict arose between security and personal privacy. Peter Briger hoped to solve this problem through technology and develop a product model that used data analysis. After inputting massive amounts of public information, he used computers to build character relationship models and ultimately identified a bunch of suspicious people.

The most amazing thing was that these suspicious targets largely matched the targets that the CIA and FBI had spent a lot of manpower and resources to find. Therefore, the CIA was interested in placing an order to outsource the integrated information retrieval and data analysis business to Peter Briger's team.

Unfortunately, they were not strong enough at the moment and needed to expand their team and obtain more funding to get this order.

In other words, this studio, only half a year old, had already found a big client.

However, Larry Page also mentioned in the email that although he thought the product made by Peter Briger's team was very innovative, he had to be careful when cooperating with these agencies, as it would easily arouse the anger of netizens if it crossed the line.

Of course, Su Yehao knew the importance of protecting personal privacy. Large Internet companies in Silicon Valley had held private meetings in the form of salons to discuss this issue and had to make some compromises under pressure, only promising to provide users' public information data.

Fortunately, tAt and tvt, Google and tot, were clearly separated from the beginning, otherwise even the mainland Internet business would be affected.

Leaving aside those messy and upsetting things, the entrepreneurial goal of this company was, in Su Yehao's eyes, nothing less than big data.

No wonder Larry Page was concerned. A product that could integrate vast amounts of information and analyze it was a relatively novel concept, which could be used not only by PayPal, but also by Google's search and advertising business, the mainland's Credit Treasure, tot, and other products.

As for those outsourcing orders, Su Yehao didn't think much of them. If there was an opportunity to directly acquire Peter Briger and his team, it was very likely that Google's development would take another step forward, and the security of PayPal and Credit Treasure in the field of user anti-fraud would be strengthened.

If there was an opportunity to develop independently, he believed that the other party would not like to be abused and hide in the shadows to cooperate with those agencies. The importance of big data was far more than just finding people.

Even if Su Yehao didn't understand it very well, he could think of many wonderful uses. In addition to serving Internet companies and providing personalized services, there were also things like anti-money laundering, catching tax evasion, and data collection. It was a waste of talent to only use it to help the CIA catch people.

Faced with such an investment project, how could Su Yehao not be tempted? He immediately replied to the email, saying that he would let KOKO Ventures communicate with Peter Briger. Then, he sent an email to Lin Youfeng, the head of KOKO Ventures in Silicon Valley, asking him to acquire as many shares as possible...

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He woke up after a good night's sleep.

Taking advantage of the cool morning weather, he took Jiang Yu and the others for a walk in his own yard.

The design of this villa was quite elaborate, costing nearly 200 million RMB. The trees and flowers in the yard were carefully selected from all over the country. There were as many as eight old osmanthus trees that were a hundred years old, as well as ancient camellia trees, Podocarpus, and so on, all of which reflected exquisiteness.

Nan Gongtian heard noise coming from afar and asked curiously, "Is there construction going on nearby? Why is it so noisy so early in the morning?"

Su Yehao calmly replied, "It may be Vera's house being renovated. Yesterday, I stood on the attic of Lingxiao Terrace and found that it was almost finished. She directly copied the style of my villa, which saved a lot of trouble, but she only has a small yard over there."

"...Vera Andrade?"

With a suspicious look in her eyes, Nan Gongtian teased, "Oh, so you haven't given up after all. You're trying to get her to live next door so that you can get the first chance, right? Men are always fickle, I've seen through it."

"At that time, I asked her to paint, and she liked the environment here, so she used the land as payment for her creation. Didn't I tell you that? Now that the house is almost finished, you're bringing up old grudges. Isn't it a little late?"

"...Hmph, you're actually scolding me for Vera."

"???"

Seeing her smiling, Su Yehao knew that she was teasing him. Speechless, he said, "With a clear conscience, there's really nothing between me and her. Someone else was still thinking about going on a blind date with me before, but recently I've become immune."

After hearing this, Jiang Yu looked over and rolled her eyes, saying, "Why isn't anyone looking for you for a blind date? Don't you know why? You're almost enough for a mahjong table, and you still want to turn into a basketball team or a soccer team?"

Thinking that he had long since assembled a mahjong table, Su Yehao couldn't help but curl the corners of his mouth:

"I'm being bullied by you again, I'm afraid of you. I'll go to Dr. Lin Baojian's place later. I've arranged for someone to deliver a painting. You can help keep an eye on it. It cost 10 million to buy, so remember to check it carefully."

This painting has no name, it's just called "29·09·64", named after the date, created in 1964, more than two meters high and more than three meters wide, and it's going to be hung in the hallway outside the bedroom.

Su Yehao packed up and went out first.

He took a car through customs and headed to the North District Semiconductor Industrial Park in Hong Kong.

Lin Baojian's team has a research institute located in the North District Semiconductor Industrial Park, next to the Hong Kong Golf Club's Fanling Course.

Although Canon was short-sighted and chose to withdraw its research personnel, it didn't actually delay the research and development plan too much. ASML took over directly.

Although ASML's technology is not as good as the lithography machines of Japan's Canon, Nikon and Canon have launched 157-nanometer lithography machines, further dominating the market. ASML has no choice but to treat Su Yehao's team as a life-saving straw, and can only do its best to support it, both with money and effort.

In addition, because it is not restricted by Europe and the United States, it can cooperate with top universities and research institutions, and the research and development progress is actually faster than before, and the speed of burning money is also accelerating.

At present, Lin Baojian's team is still independent of ASML and is controlled by Su Yehao, while he also holds about 37% of ASML's shares. The basis of cooperation is more solid than that of Canon.