The Birth of Shanghai's First Conglomerate

The group doesn't have many places to spend money this year.

The money that needed to be spent was basically all spent in the past year.

After all, he cashed out all his Tesla shares in 2022, and it turned out to be a very correct move.

Compared to Nvidia, Tesla's appreciation potential is still much lower.

As for Google, it's a long-term, stable, and healthy stock; it won't cash out unless absolutely necessary.

Chen Pingsheng reviewed his important assets again. After Tang Jing told him that the group would not be recruiting new employees this year, many universities were quite disappointed.

In addition, the management academy built by Tengying Group with an investment of over 10 billion yuan is looking for him to give an opening speech at the start of the new semester this year.

The main issue is that the first three-year term of the management school is about to end, and many of the first batch of students will be graduating soon. As the founder and honorary principal, he hasn't even given a single public speech yet.

I have a feeling that they don't value that side of the story enough.

Actually, that's not the case. The main reason is that there are just too many places and occasions that want to invite him to give speeches now. If he wanted to, he could talk from the beginning of the year to the end.

This thing might be a source of pride for many people, but it's completely meaningless to him.

Given his position, he can speak the truth, but he cannot speak casually.

Just as he can no longer tell outsiders, the domestic market environment is no longer suitable for small-capital entrepreneurship.

The husband and wife team can barely make ends meet by working hard, and they are doing quite well.

But the hope of getting rich is now extremely slim.

Even his early Dream Fund no longer invests in small projects, but instead focuses on large enterprises or large projects.

Encouraging entrepreneurship and telling others that hardship is a blessing at times like these is not called inspiration, but rather calling them suckers.

In any public speech, Mr. Ma has always been the most outspoken and eloquent.

Just look where he is now; he's practically disappeared from the public eye in China.

Throughout the year in Shanghai, he has been invited to attend countless economic conferences and renowned university lectures, but he has declined them all.

"Boss, the planning department wants to ask if we're going to hold a Lantern Festival celebration this year?"

"Go ahead and do it, and make it as lively as possible."

Chen Pingsheng said, "The illness has just subsided, so it's still a good thing no matter what."

Alright... Little Secretary Tang Jing has another big task to do.

A few more days passed, and Chen An'an returned from Sichuan.

She brought back a lot of gifts this time and told her family about the strange and wonderful things that happened during her trip.

Like super cute giant pandas, Qingcheng Mountain, Taikoo Li and the like.

Erpiya was incredibly envious and wished she could just set off for Sichuan.

Time flies, and before we know it, it's the Lantern Festival.

Chang Fu came by once during that time, and he was so frustrated and disappointed.

He wanted to slap himself; he hadn't invested in Nvidia during its downturn.

Hesitantly, I still picked a bunch of junk stocks, and now I'm in a really bad situation.

When the stock market is booming, everyone is a stock market genius; when the stock market is down, everyone becomes a jinx.

Fortunately, Chen Pingsheng himself has always focused on investing in industrial stocks and never speculates on short-term stocks, only long-term ones.

Over the years, with the surge in new energy prices and the booming AI industry, he has made a fortune.

On the Lantern Festival, Tencent Pictures held its own Lantern Festival celebration in Jinshan.

Being a boss isn't easy these days; you also have to sing for your employees.

Chen Pingsheng pulled several senior executives together, and they sang one line after another. As long as there were many people, they definitely couldn't tell who was good and who was bad.

The marketing conference was a great success, and it was also an encouragement for the group to thrive again this year.

When the Lantern Festival ended, Chen Pingsheng took Chen An'an to school. She was already in the second semester of her first year of high school.

The dormitory still had the same four girls. Chen Pingsheng drove his custom-made Passat, which was specially made for transporting girls, slowly following behind a group of luxury cars.

On the way, he kept reminding the little guy, "An'an, you have to work hard!"

If I don't work harder, I'll only be able to go to Harvard.

The first year of high school is relatively relaxed, but the third year is much more stressful. It's not just the students who are stressed, but also the countless parents who accompany them to the exam.

Many students suffer from depression, mainly during their senior year of high school.

To put it bluntly, it's because of the immense pressure.

Chen An'an's ability to withstand pressure is exceptionally strong. Just kidding, you think she got it for nothing after being third from the bottom for so many years?

Everything can defeat her, except for grades.

If I do well on the exam, I'll hold my head high and tell everyone that I, Chen An'an, just didn't study before. But if I wanted to, getting into a top-tier university like a 985 or 211 would be a piece of cake.

Even if you don't do well on the exam, you can still get into Tsinghua or Peking University through the special talent admission route.

Why do you think top universities still have so many special admission slots? They just don't say it outright.

There's no such thing as a lack of social skills or considerations.

Even prestigious schools rely on students' future academic performance to reap rich rewards. Who dares to say that the top student in the class will necessarily be better than the worst rich kid in the class?
You go out to work, I go out to inherit the family business; we're not on the same level.

So, where Chen An'an wants to go to university in the future mainly depends on herself. With her father's current abilities, wherever she wants to go, the university there will quickly open its doors to her.

This is the influence from our parents.

When Chen An'an entered the school, she kept encouraging herself, saying that she would definitely rely on herself.

If you can't rely on yourself, it's not shameful to rely on your dad.

Erpiya had it easy; she was bad at everything from childhood to adulthood, except for her grades.

Her younger brother was more average, neither outstanding nor mediocre, and he was always well-behaved in class.

They neither flaunt their family background nor show any particular emotion because of their achievements.

Anyway, whatever score I get is fine; the main thing is that it doesn't matter, as long as I can go play with Su Xiaoxi.

After the three children went to school, Chen Pingsheng also started working seriously. He would only ask them a few questions when they came back.

Days passed by.

He has been busy building an AI R&D center in China and buying core AI foundational data models, including core data, from abroad.

Because he has no shortage of money this year, his core technology field can be said to be developing extremely rapidly.

Whether it's Tengde Times, which is already listed, or AI artificial intelligence, including Tengfei New Energy, which is seeking an IPO, the pace of progress is extremely fast.

The AI ​​team is currently developing an artificial intelligence chatbot.

It allows for voice and text interaction, helping users make decisions, solve problems, and obtain information, including the most suitable shopping information.

This AI can be downloaded to your phone and used in new energy intelligent driving models.

At the same time, it is also developing its own chatbot, the kind of robot that can be placed at home to clean, take care of children, and do simple housework.

The applications of AI are beyond imagination.

Over the next decade, all tech giants will focus their startup projects on this sector, and Chen Pingsheng himself is no exception.

He even wants to develop an AI smartphone.

All of this requires a huge amount of funding and cannot be accomplished in just one or two years.

Chen Pingsheng began to promote the core applications of AI across the country. He did all this in order to recruit more brilliant mathematicians, engineers, and other talented people in the field of AI.

He not only recruited domestically, but also invested over 30 billion yuan in Japan, South Korea, India, Canada, Singapore, and other countries to establish R&D centers and recruit people globally for this project. In China, the earliest company to develop AI was none other than Baidu itself, which recruited Lu Qi back then, primarily for the purpose of developing AI.

It's a pity that this thing requires too much investment, and there's no profit model to be seen in the early stages; it's a bottomless pit.

It's impossible to say exactly how much money would be needed to make this happen.

Moreover, companies including Apple, Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, and Tesla are all increasing their investment in this sector.

Competing with these companies, no one has the confidence to guarantee their place in the market.

Nevertheless, AI is consistently identified as a core technology for the future at every global technology conference.

But no one has been able to clearly explain what AI is or how to make money from it.

If you only know how to do this, no matter how great your product is now, it might end up like Apple eliminating Nokia in the future.

You didn't even realize the building was about to collapse.

Chen Pingsheng attended a total of 19 technology conferences on the future development of AI in February alone.

He spends most of his time on this section.

The continuous advancement of AI also signifies the continuous progress of its own new energy sector.

All of these things complement each other.

It's fair to say that, to date, few people can clearly define the future applications of AI technology.

However, some sectors have indeed started to generate revenue, namely AI digital human live streaming.

This thing is just a small part of AI and doesn't require much technology, but it can actually make money very quickly.

Tengfei AI has developed a large number of digital human models, which are used in Tengyou Media's daily live-streaming sales.

In the initial stage, these digital humans can only sell goods according to a pre-set program using standard procedures.

In advanced stages, it can answer user questions and engage in normal conversation with users.

It can be said that developing such a digital human model does not take too much time and effort; with the AI ​​technology they have accumulated, they can develop countless models in a single day.

If an ordinary person uses it to make money, it's like having a robot working for you day and night.

It's clear that mastering advanced AI technology makes making money not so difficult.

Tengyou Media and these companies are essentially the same entity. The reason they use these digital human models for product promotion is both to promote AI technology and to collect more sales data.

Simply put, AI is a kind of computing power. Whether it's chatting or selling products, as long as you feed it enough data and models, it can continuously analyze and apply the data like a super brain, eventually producing a powerful computing model.

It will completely replace the current general live-streaming e-commerce, and even be comparable to the strongest live-streaming e-commerce platforms.

Therefore, the deeper this technology develops, the more terrifying it becomes.

No one knows what the final outcome will be, but everyone is putting in their best effort to dig deeper into this area.

Chen Pingsheng's investment of 50 billion yuan in AI before the Lunar New Year was almost entirely spent in just three months.

Of course, his AI team has also become the largest AI project team in the country to date.

AI research and development centers are located all over the world.

They even bought back a whole bunch of basic AI technologies and computing power models.

With his current level of dedication, he can't compare to Baidu's initial hesitation.

Traditional fields no longer pose any challenge for him. His next plan, in addition to developing the best AI-powered intelligent driving system, is to develop an AI smartphone.

It's not really about disrupting the existing mobile phone market, since Apple and Google have been doing this for a long time.

He simply needs to break into the existing mobile phone market, and AI is the best opportunity.

Otherwise, with his current investment, who knows how many years it would take to break even.

It's simply unrealistic to expect AI-powered digital humans to generate meager profits through live streaming.

Aside from automobiles, mobile phones are the largest market globally.

The best way to quickly enter the mobile phone market is to directly acquire a mobile phone company with a certain global market share.

This allows you to accumulate all the necessary basic mobile phone patents and market access in the early stages.

Chen Pingsheng was not in a hurry. He would not do anything in the AI ​​sector unless he was absolutely certain of his success.

The main issue is that the competition in the mobile phone market is already too fierce.

The existing domestic market has been almost completely divided up.

For at least a decade, no new mobile phone brands have emerged; it's still the same few companies that are maintaining the status quo.

The high-end market is dominated by Huawei and Apple.

In the mid-to-low-end market, there are Xiaomi and Honor, while in the lower-tier market, there are major blue-green manufacturers like OPPO and vivo.

This track is incredibly crowded.

For now, we'll focus our efforts on the AI ​​sector and wait until we gain a certain advantage or advanced technology there before making any further moves.

In April 2023, temperatures rose.

When Chen Pingsheng elevated AI to a core strategic direction and invested 50 billion yuan in it over a six-month period.

The listing of Tengfei New Energy is no longer a big problem; the main issue is that everyone has high expectations for it.

Speaking solely of car manufacturing, he is already the entrepreneur with the largest investment in China.

Heavy investment has been made again in core AI technologies, and these are being calculated separately and independently.

This means that the financial reports of the AI ​​sector will not affect Tengfei Auto.

However, its technology can bring unlimited benefits to Tengfei New Energy.

To put it simply, the stock market is all about expectations. Whether it's Tengde Technology's solid-state batteries or Tengfei AI artificial intelligence, as long as a sector breaks through its core, it's all about those expectations.

All of these can bring unlimited benefits to Tengfei Auto.

Tengfei New Energy is going public on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange with a valuation of 400 billion.

Chen Pingsheng personally diluted 49% of his shares, while allocating 30% of the shares to core management personnel, including the R&D team.

The shares he personally diluted alone amounted to nearly 200 billion yuan in a single transaction, and even that much money couldn't offset the continuous investment over the past seven or eight years.

Of the 200 billion yuan raised, 50 billion yuan should be reserved for Tengfei New Energy as future R&D funding.

This was also the last large sum of R&D funding that Tengfei New Energy obtained.

In the future, it will basically have to rely on itself. Whether it's the high-end Longteng S900, or the P9, U5, D6, etc., they are all selling very well.

At least domestically, it's really quite good.

Its sales have consistently been second only to Tesla.

If you add up all of their models, their sales have already surpassed Tesla's.

Even a single model cannot outsell Tesla's Model Y, which is very competitive in first-tier cities, especially in the Yangtze River Delta region where it is ubiquitous.

After receiving the 150 billion yuan, he gave 30 billion yuan of it to Tengfei AI.

The remaining 120 billion was used to buy Microsoft during its downturn.

At its peak, Microsoft's market capitalization reached $2.5 trillion, and its annual net profit was approximately $70 billion.

Net profit decreased by 12% year-on-year due to last year's financial report falling short of expectations.

Microsoft's market capitalization has fallen back to $1.65 trillion.

With that 1200 billion yuan investment, he can only buy back 1% of the shares.

(End of this chapter)