Chapter 124: Squeezing them Out

The boardroom had grown heavy with silence again.Not the quiet of exhaustion, but the kind that comes before a deal shifts in someone’s favor.

Timothy leaned back in his chair, steepling his fingers as his eyes moved from face to face, Zuckerberg, Altman, Pichai, Jassy, Srouji, Musk, Nadella, Krishna, and finally Jensen.

Each of them had put their cards on the table. Tens of billions of dollars in total commitments.

But Timothy Guerrero wasn’t a man who stopped at accepting. He was a man who maximized.

"Gentlemen," Timothy began, his tone calm but carrying a faint edge. "And of course, Johny," he nodded at Apple’s rep, "first, I want to say your offers are all... impressive. Truly. But let’s be realistic."

He paused, letting the words hang.

"You’re not bidding for GPUs. You’re bidding for control over the future of AI. And that future runs through Aurion."

A quiet murmur rippled through the room.

Hana, seated at his right, kept her expression neutral, but there was a glint in her eyes. She knew that tone. Timothy was about to push the table.

Timothy turned first to Mark Zuckerberg.

"Mark, your $3.8 billion contract and $200 million premium are generous. But let’s be honest — Meta’s running hundreds of thousands of A100s across the world. If you’re serious about scaling to the next level, 80,000 chips won’t even scratch the surface."

Zuckerberg’s brow furrowed.

Timothy leaned forward. "Double your order. 160,000 Aurion X3s, priority access, and I’ll give you an exclusive optimization suite for LLaMA and Horizon AI. I’ll also allow firmware-level customization for Meta’s ecosystem, for an additional $1 billion."

Mark smirked slightly. "You’re pushing hard, Mr. Guerrero."

Timothy smiled. "You’d do the same in my seat."

After a short pause, Zuckerberg nodded. "Make it $5.5 billion total. You’ll get your firmware deal."

Next, he turned to Sam Altman.

"Sam. Your deal’s solid, but you’re asking for early delivery, 60,000 units in six months. That’s priority access, and priority costs extra. Especially since you’re co-developing architecture."

Sam tilted his head slightly. "What do you have in mind?"

"Add $1.3 billion to your offer," Timothy said evenly. "You’ll get first priority for all cluster shipments until Q2 2028, before any commercial or government batch."

Sam considered it, then nodded slowly. "$6.5 billion total. But I want joint patent rights for distributed compute protocols."

Timothy grinned. "Deal."

Sundar Pichai watched quietly as the others negotiated. When Timothy turned his gaze on him, Sundar simply adjusted his glasses.

"Google’s offer is strong," Timothy said. "But if we’re co-financing a data center in the Philippines, I want more than money. I want visibility, the Aurion name beside Google Cloud’s on every press release, and access to Google’s AI optimization stack for our internal R&D."

"That’s... doable," Sundar replied, "if the joint center expands into two facilities."

"Two?" Timothy echoed.

"One in Manila," Sundar said. "The other in Bangkok. Both co-owned."

Timothy nodded approvingly. "Then make the deal $8 billion — same ratio, 60/40 in our favor."

Sundar smiled faintly. "You drive a hard bargain."

"Only when it’s worth it," Timothy replied.

Andy Jassy leaned forward next. "So what’s my penalty for going first, huh?"

Timothy chuckled. "No penalty. But AWS integration means we’re trusting your infrastructure with our brand. I need full transparency, and a security audit handled by our own engineers."

"Done," Andy said.

"And the price," Timothy continued, "goes up to $9 billion. You’ll get your 100,000 units — but with full lithium cooling modules and predictive maintenance support. That means less downtime, more compute hours."

Andy smirked. "That’s a good upsell, Timothy. Add the billion."

"Excellent," Timothy said, jotting something on his tablet. "That’s how we scale."

Now it was Johny Srouji’s turn. The Apple executive had been quiet so far, observing the growing numbers with interest.

Timothy smiled faintly. "Johny, Apple doesn’t buy chips. You buy rights. You’re offering $8 billion plus royalties, fair, but it doesn’t reflect the market leverage you’ll gain. Aurion cores will halve your power consumption and push Neural Engine performance beyond anything Qualcomm or Google can replicate."

Johny’s eyebrow rose slightly. "What do you want?"

Timothy’s tone was calm but absolute. "$10 billion licensing fee, and royalties raised to $60 per unit."

"That’s a thirty-billion impact over ten years," Johny said.

"And a trillion-dollar edge over competitors," Timothy countered.

Johny chuckled under his breath, then nodded. "You’re good. Done."

"Now Elon," Timothy said with a smirk. "You’re paying half in logistics credits."

"Yeah," Elon said casually. "Because rockets are expensive."

"Then replace half of those credits with equity in Starlink’s AI routing division," Timothy said flatly. "Aurion wants a foothold in orbital computation."

Elon blinked, then grinned. "You’re dangerous. Fine, $5.8 billion total, and you get 2.5% equity in the orbital AI project."

Timothy extended a hand briefly. "Deal."

Satya Nadella’s calm voice cut through once more. "And what would you ask from us, Mr. Guerrero?"

Timothy leaned back slightly. "Azure is already a behemoth. What you need is performance continuity, and what I need is stability. Let’s expand your investment from $10 to $12 billion, with a clause to upgrade every five years to the latest generation Aurion chips."

Satya thought for a moment, then nodded. "That’s acceptable. We’ll integrate Aurion into Azure’s global node architecture."

"Perfect," Timothy said.

"Arvind," Timothy said, "I like the academic angle. But you’re underpricing yourself. IBM’s legacy in research deserves a flagship project. I’ll add a condition, make it $2.8 billion, and I’ll establish an ’Aurion-IBM Center for Quantum-AI Convergence’ in partnership with your labs."

Arvind smiled. "That’s a poetic name. Done."

Finally, all eyes turned back to Jensen. The man who started it all.

Timothy clasped his hands. "Jensen, you’re already investing $30 billion. But let’s scale it further, build not just fabs, but an entire Aurion Foundry Network. Subic, Batangas, and Cebu, and Davao."

Jensen nodded thoughtfully. "How much do you want to raise that to?"

"$50 billion total," Timothy said evenly. "We’ll each own 50% of the global expansion network."

For a long moment, Jensen just studied him then slowly smiled. "You remind me of myself twenty years ago."

"I’ll take that as a compliment," Timothy said.

"It is," Jensen replied. "Done."

Timothy exhaled slowly, rising from his seat. "Gentlemen, and Johny, thank you for your confidence. What we’ve accomplished today isn’t just a business milestone. It’s history. Let me remind you once again, Aurion is the future of the semiconductor industry."