The Birth of Shanghai's First Conglomerate

October 18th.

Chen An'an and three other girls set up a large screen in their university dormitory to watch the launch of the Tengfei AI phone with over a million netizens.

Prior to the press conference, there was three months of intensive online promotion.

This is just the official publicity campaign.

Alongside the promotional campaign, the launch also included the tens of thousands of Tengfei AI offline physical sales stores that had been opened with an investment of over 10 billion yuan.

In addition to mobile phones, these stores also sell cars, tablets, and a range of small smart home devices.

Those are all just incidental.

There is no doubt that Tengfei AI has officially entered the smart home and mobile phone fields.

On the afternoon of October 18, 2025.

Chen Pingsheng also officially announced through Tengfei AI Group that the company will invest over US$250 billion in the AI ​​field over the next five years.

To fully assist domestic enterprises, including his own, in winning the future AI battle.

AI is far more than just simple online Q&A and search; it will penetrate every aspect of various industries.

No one knows who will be the next to be eliminated by AI, but there is no doubt that AI is also the key to industrial upgrading and winning the future technology war.

After the domestic real estate industry suffered a slump, industrial upgrading is essential to revitalize the economy.

At its simplest point, although China's industrial chain is complete, most of it belongs to low- to mid-end OEM manufacturing.

High-end instruments, including precision machining and patented technologies.

It can be said that most of them are controlled by overseas technology giants.

Take a mobile phone as an example. For every phone sold by a domestic brand, most of the profit has to be handed over to Google, Samsung, or Qualcomm.

This is the absolute advantage of mastering the technology; the patent fees alone for just one year are beyond imagination.

Meanwhile, China is developing this aspect at a rapid pace in order to break the blockade and keep most of the profits from technology products in its own hands.

Chen Pingsheng's decision to personally invest another 250 billion US dollars in the field of AI can be described as a unique one.

It is also the domestic private enterprise that invests the most in the field of AI, without exception.

$250 billion may seem like a lot, but it's really just cashing out 1% of Google's shares.

As for the newly built mobile phone super factory, including the future Tengfei New Energy Vehicle Super Factory.

Most of the time, basic manual labor has been replaced by Tengfei AI robots.

A small portion still employs skilled workers.

In one mega-factory, the ratio of robots to skilled workers reached 5:5.

That is, half and half.

This will, to some extent, greatly reduce labor costs, giving his own Tengfei cars and Tengfei AI phones a significant global cost advantage.

This is unavoidable. Once the cost advantage is gone, and the technological content of his own patents still lags behind those of the world's top technology giants.

First, we need to establish a firm foothold globally before we can talk about surpassing others.

Whether it's Tengfei AI, or the early Tengde Times and Tengfei New Energy, they all succeeded only because of the massive investment of capital.

There is no such thing as getting big returns with small investments; everything is based on large investments and large returns.

This is the main reason why it is generally difficult for private enterprises to enter the technology sector.

The amount of money required is beyond the imagination of ordinary people.

Even investors are unwilling to pour money into such small businesses unless you've already established a certain reputation.

Chen Pingsheng's donation of 250 billion US dollars caused a huge uproar in the entire domestic AI industry.

Everyone's talking about AI, and Baidu, the Chinese search giant, was the first to get into it.

The result was that there was always input but no output. After a few years, the boss and his wife realized that this would not work and cut most of the profits.

Countless others followed suit, and it seemed that all the world's tech giants and big capital were saying that the future belonged to the AI ​​era.

But what exactly is AI?
Nobody can say for sure how it will actually make a profit. Even Apple, which originally planned to build a car, abandoned the idea after several years of research.

Will Apple run out of money?

With annual profits exceeding hundreds of billions of US dollars, what can compare?

The most crucial point is that it made a statement that made it give up on building cars: it said that the ultimate goal of car manufacturing is still AI.

If that's the case, why is it still making cars? It might as well develop AI.

Meanwhile, the founder of another tech giant, Facebook, also announced that he would invest $600 billion to $650 billion in the AI ​​industry.

Nvidia is even more far ahead.

It's fair to say that the popularity of this industry far surpasses that of new energy vehicles and even mobile phones.

The investment amounts that everyone announces are as high as tens of billions of US dollars.

This is enough to make even capitalists weep.

Numerous large corporations in China have also invested heavily in AI.

But Chen Pingsheng is the only one who dares to announce that he will invest 250 billion US dollars in this industry within five years.

Including the investments made in the past three years, he has actually invested over 350 billion yuan in the field of AI.

If he still can't achieve results, there's nothing he can do.

In any case, the large amount of unrealized shares he still holds are only 1.5% of Nvidia.

Based on Nvidia's current market capitalization, its valuation is approximately $450 billion.

That's over 300 billion RMB.

In addition, there's 2% of TikTok, which, based on its current market value, is worth approximately tens of billions of US dollars.

He also plans to sell the shares to Tencent Media.

As for the shares of Tengde Times and Tengfei New Energy that I hold, I do not plan to touch them in the next few years.

There's no need to make any changes.

Aside from investing in AI, he doesn't really have many other places to spend money now; he's already spent almost everything he needed to.

Whether it's the super cruise ship with an investment of over 40 billion yuan, the seven-star Two Mountains Hotel, or the Tengfei Future Technology University built with 100 billion yuan in funding, it's all about these projects.

He has already paid for all of these in full.

Even the Tengfei AI mobile phone, which has an independent investment of 1600 billion yuan, is the same. Looking around, there's nowhere else in the family that can spend a lot of money.

No matter how much Erpiya squanders money, she can only spend a few billion of her profits at most in a year.

It won't have any impact on the family at all.

The battle for AI will not be a short-term one, but a long-term battle that will span five, ten, or even twenty or thirty years.

$250 billion is merely enough to ensure that Ascendas AI doesn't fall behind in the AI ​​wars of the next five years.

To truly win, at least $250 billion will need to be invested, and the entire group needs to work together with one heart and one mind.

The key to this battle lies in whether he can win or even secure a decisive victory.

Whether it's Tengfei's new energy vehicles or Tengfei's AI phones, they will be unstoppable on the global stage.

Because these are all product upgrades based on certain AI technologies.

This is also the main reason why he has to keep investing money in this field.

It can be roughly described as "if you don't advance, you fall behind".

Either stride forward, or retreat steadily like Baidu did in the past.

There is no other way.

When making large investments in the technology industry, the worst thing you can do is hesitate and be indecisive.

(End of this chapter)