781: Chapter 776 This is our money printing machine

Liang Yibai dropped the half-eaten Tiramisu in his hand onto the plate.

"Mr. Shen, are you telling fairy tales?"

Liang Yibai threw down his fork and pointed at the tower outside the window, which was still undergoing interior renovation.

"That's an 800-meter-tall steel pipe, not Doraemon's pocket. Right now, the West has its thumb on the throat of all high-end graphics cards globally. An A10 card is being scalped for 300,000 yuan, and we still can't get stock."

"We need to build the world's largest supercomputing center, requiring at least 100,000 cards. You have the money, but they won't sell."

The air in the conference room solidified.

This was the reality, the dead end facing every domestic enterprise attempting to break into the Artificial Intelligence field at this moment.

An Ran spun the pen in her hand, her brow furrowed into the character 'Chuan' ( river).

Although she didn't understand the technology, she understood the market. The current market inventory wasn't even a fraction of what was needed.

Shen Yan leaned back against the chair, looking at the chandelier on the ceiling, but a line of pale blue text appeared on his retina.

[Today's Intelligence: 'Blue Sea Microelectronics' in Shenzhen is facing bankruptcy liquidation due to a broken capital chain. In Container No. 3 deep within its warehouse, sealed away are the schematics and semi-finished prototypes of the 'Photon Architecture' that its founder failed to develop five years ago. This technology was mistakenly judged as scrap, but it actually only requires replacing the thermal conduction medium to break through Moore's Law.]

The intelligence was brief but sufficiently fatal.

"Who said we have to buy their cards?"

Shen Yan sat up straight, pulled an orange from his pocket, and slowly began peeling it.

"Other people's things don't feel right to use."

"Old Chen, fly to Shenzhen this afternoon and buy out 'Blue Sea Microelectronics.'"

Chen Guangke froze, his jaw nearly hitting the floor.

"Blue Sea? That broken factory that started with MP3 chips and now can't even pay salaries?"

"Just buy it if I tell you to, stop talking nonsense. Buy everything, including the junk in Warehouse No. 3. Don't let a single piece slip away."

Shen Yan popped an orange segment into his mouth; the sweetness pleased him.

"Engineer Liang, you're going too. When you get there, you will see your new toy."

In the first month, a joke circulated in the business district.

The newly crowned richest man, Shen Yan, must have gone crazy, spending 200 million to buy a dilapidated electronics factory, allegedly even taking the rats in the factory building with him.

The Asia-Pacific head of the Western tech giant 'Aegis' posted a picture of 'scavenging junk' on Twitter, with accompanying text that, while not naming names, was dripping with sarcasm.

Shen Yan did not respond; he was busy building LEGOs with his daughter.

In the second month, several hundred fully enclosed black trucks suddenly appeared at the construction site in the Linhai New Area.

That was the 'scrap' transported from 'Blue Sea Microelectronics.'

Liang Yibai roared like a madman in the temporarily constructed cleanroom, waving the yellowed schematic in his hand.

"Genius! What madman came up with this! Using light instead of electricity—this is art, damn it!"

It turned out the so-called failure was only because the heat dissipation materials available back then couldn't meet the requirements, causing the chip to burn out immediately upon power application.

And now, Shen Yan possessed the carbon nanotubes specifically for the sky city.

The most perfect thermal conduction material.

The combination of the two was like dry tinder meeting a raging fire.

In the third month, the first 'Candle Dragon' photon chip successfully entered trial production.

Its computing power was ten times that of Nvidia's latest flagship, with only one-tenth of the power consumption.

The news was strictly sealed; not even a fly could enter the laboratory.

Shen Yan stood outside the laboratory, watching Liang Yibai weep while clutching the fingernail-sized chip.

He knew this was only the beginning.

The system panel flickered again.

[Today's Random Mission: The Appetite of the Computing Monster.]

[Intelligence Unlocked: Next month, the Pacific Warm Current will change its course to flow past the outer sea of the Linhai New Area. The seabed fault zone contains immense geothermal energy, which, combined with the latest 'Thermal Differential Power Generation' technology, can provide electricity equivalent to three nuclear power plants.]

Supercomputing centers are power hogs.

The existing municipal power supply could not handle the full-power operation of 100,000 photon chips.

Shen Yan immediately made a decision and launched the 'Deep Sea Heart' plan.

In the fourth month, the outside world was still mocking Shen Yan's electronics factory as a bottomless pit.

Shen Yan had already smashed tens of billions into the ocean.

Giant engineering vessels roared day and night on the sea surface; superconducting cables stretching dozens of kilometers long extended like tentacles toward the abyssal depths.

Someone reported Shen Yan for destroying the marine ecosystem.

Environmental protection personnel came three times, each time returning utterly baffled while holding the 'Marine Environment Improvement Report' provided by Shen Yan.

Because Shen Yan used the temperature difference generated by the power generation equipment to create a massive artificial fishing ground on the seabed.

There were even more schools of fish than before.

In the fifth month, the power grid was connected.

Three hundred meters beneath the top of the sky city, the massive server room lit up with a faint blue glow.

One hundred thousand 'Candle Dragon' chips lay neatly arranged in pools filled with insulating coolant, like sleeping soldiers.

The scene was more shocking than any science fiction movie.

Chen Guangke stood on the glass walkway of the server room, his legs starting to tremble.

"Brother Yan, if this thing explodes, could we blow up half the Linhai New Area?"

Shen Yan looked at the churning blue liquid beneath his feet, his expression calm.

"It won't explode. This is our money printer."

The hardware was secured, the energy was secured; now, the soul was missing.

The algorithm.

Current Artificial Intelligence algorithms were mostly based on Western open-source frameworks.

Using someone else's framework meant always building a house on someone else's foundation.

Shen Yan didn't do such foolish things.

[Advanced Intelligence Drop: The prototype of the self-evolving algorithm codenamed 'Nuwa' is hidden in the encrypted section of a private blog belonging to a Chinese janitor at MIT. The password is the name of the cat he kept back home.]

In the sixth month, Shen Yan personally flew to Boston.

He brought no bodyguards, only a checkbook and a bag of tea from his hometown.

Three days later, an old man named Zhou Qiming returned to the country in a wheelchair, accompanying Shen Yan.

This old man was unknown in academic circles and had even been ostracized due to his reclusive personality.

But Shen Yan knew that what this old man held in his mind was worth more than ten Nobel laureates.

In the seventh month, the supercomputing center at the summit of the sky city began operation.

Zhou Qiming's thin fingers typed the final line of code on the keyboard.

On the screen, a green dot began to flicker.

It was as if it had life, starting to ravenously devour massive amounts of data.

From publicly available information on the internet, to rare and unique collections in libraries, and then to the various scientific research data Shen Yan had spent heavily to acquire.

It was learning.

The speed was astonishing.

Western media began to sense that something was wrong.

Global network traffic showed abnormal fluctuations, with the source pointing directly at that port city in the East.

The 'Aegis' company announced the early release of their 'Zeus 5' Artificial Intelligence, attempting to overwhelm public opinion.

At the press conference, 'Zeus 5' demonstrated astonishing drawing and conversational abilities.

Wall Street cheered wildly, and the stock price of the Shen Group plummeted in response.