Those Years When I Was Forced to Top the Forbes List

Chapter 372 Returning Home - Meeting Goldman Sachs Again
How Goldman Sachs communicated with ABN AMRO regarding increasing the bet from $1.1 million to $3.1 million is a matter for Goldman Sachs to handle.

Once the contract was signed, Chen Xuebing returned to his silence and composure, ignoring Fabrice's tactical attempts to entice him on the topic of the singularity, even suggesting that Goldman Sachs' valuation might eventually be higher than PwC's.

Fabrice was deeply impressed by the difference in Chen Xuebing's attitude before and after.

After seeing Chen Xuebing off, he took out Chen Xuebing's personal registration information, looked at it for a long time, and then turned on the computer to look up some information.

He saw a video, and when the screen unfolded and he saw Jobs, he was momentarily surprised.

"Steve Jobs, what do you think this press conference means?"

"I believe that touchscreens are the future."

"The Internet has found a brand-new, mobile medium. What kind of energy will it unleash?"

As he watched the video with Chinese and English subtitles play, he became increasingly surprised. Seeing that there were no comments below, he discovered that the video source was actually a comedy video website with a low click rate, Break.com.

He immediately opened the number one ranked YouTube website and searched for "kyrin" and "singularity" again. He found that there was no such video. Moreover, the first recommended video below was the Nokia N95 launch event in Hangzhou, China.

Knowing this all too well, he immediately realized that Nokia had paid YouTube to specifically block the video and redirect search results to their own products; otherwise, such a cutting-edge launch video would not have failed to spread.

Nokia is specifically targeting this mobile phone company!

A product that Nokia could target and that Jobs was involved in is definitely not simple.

He took a deep breath, took out his phone, and called Hu Zuliu, Managing Director of Goldman Sachs Asia.

"Fred, I may have made a mistake just now."

When Chen Xuebing arrived in Silicon Valley, he felt an unprecedented entrepreneurial atmosphere.

The factory site was chosen in Santa Clara County, the heart of Silicon Valley, but it was an abandoned industrial area, about 12 kilometers from Stanford. It was originally an AMD semiconductor factory, quite large, with relatively mature power lines and underground water circulation systems.

The land is held by a local developer, so it's essentially leased. When the team came from abroad, they promised the local labor organization that they would hire 300 people and take in more than 30 engineers who were laid off by AMD. The union was quite supportive and promised to invest $3.2 million in environmental remediation in the surrounding area. So far, they have encountered almost no major pressure.

It went exceptionally smoothly.

After the land contract was signed, they also received a federal green subsidy of $22.

The person in charge of the initial development was Chang Xiaoming, the deputy director of the Qidian operations department, who has now returned to China. The person in charge has now been replaced by Lin Bin, a computer teacher at Drexel University.

His name is Karen Hewitt, and he's in his fifties.

Having an American representative was also a necessity. According to Lin Bin, his teacher's academic ability was average, but he was a good person and had some old acquaintances in Silicon Valley, making him a fairly ideal figurehead.

When Chen Xuebing arrived, he saw this thin old man running up and down, directing a group of people to carry out factory renovations, and his first impression was quite good.

The 12 people from Qidian and the 8 local graduates were all busy working with the factory workers, renovating their own rooms. The scene was very lively.

Upon learning that Mr. Chen had arrived, the four-person Emerson team that had gone to San Jose to recruit also rushed back. They held a meeting to arrange subsequent expansion matters.

In short, it all comes down to money.

The data center must first complete the task of data transmission and storage for the Kunlun system.

The demand for equipment is very high.

The servers chosen are AMD Opteron Sun Fire x64s, costing $14800 each. Deploying 1,000 servers initially would cost $14.8 million.

The core switch, Cisco 6509, cost $120 million.

Storage costs are approximately $800 per TB.

Fibre Channel, $1050 per port.

All of this adds up to at least $1500 million.

Main power supply and cooling equipment, $2000 million.

Because the equipment has not yet been purchased, Emerson has contacted more than a dozen computer engineers during this period, but no contracts have been signed yet.

As agreed by Chen Xuebing and Lu Weibing, these tasks required the group to increase its capital to complete, while Qidian would handle the construction and personnel costs itself.

According to the construction schedule, the $5000 million worth of initial equipment will be purchased in a little over a month, but currently there is only a little over $300 million in construction funds in the account, so life is rather tight.

Seeing that everyone was hesitant, Chen Xuebing waved his hand and said that funding was not a problem. He would arrange for Qidian to transfer $2000 million first, and the remaining funds would arrive within April.

This statement brought joy to everyone, and Karen breathed a sigh of relief.

Lin Bin joked with Karen: "If we're ever short of money in the future, we should invite the chairman to visit the United States more often. Wherever the chairman goes, the money will be spent there. That's a company tradition."

Chen Xuebing laughed and cursed, "Bullshit."

What she was thinking was: If anyone were to invite someone, it wouldn't be Karen's turn.

Karen is just a facade; this place still needs to be managed by Chinese people.

Lin Bin is only here temporarily to help organize the work and make some preliminary arrangements for the chip talent pipeline, but he certainly can't stay here for long, at most a month.

Chen Xuebing and the Linux Foundation have reached an agreement to delay the open-source release, but at most it will be after the Kirin phone is officially launched.

With Linux being open source globally, the US data center is about to go into full operation, so we need to bring in a top talent from China to oversee the overseas branch.

I spent a symbolic day in Silicon Valley before rushing back home.

February only has 28 days, and I returned to China on the first day of March.

I spent another day in Beijing, played a game of badminton with Director Liu of the Non-Bank Department of the China Banking Regulatory Commission, and talked for about two hours before this diplomatic trip officially came to an end.

August 3, morning.

A black and gray extended Maybach picked up Chen Xuebing at Pudong Airport and slowly drove towards Huangpu.

With Spreadtrum about to go public, the company's flagship product has also undergone a significant upgrade.

Chen Xuebing looked at the grid ceiling inside the car, then made a phone call.

"Secretary Jin, I'm really sorry, but please give me two weeks. I'll work on this money and pay it off by mid-March."

"Yes, I've already sent someone to talk to the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank headquarters. I'll try to finalize the contract today, pay the money, and once we get to the Gaoteng Building, we can immediately process the group's credit line."

“I just returned to China and I saw Hutchison Whampoa’s response. Don’t worry, the investment plan in Chengdu that we agreed on will not change. I just invested several hundred million US dollars in the United States. It just needs some time to process the funds. Several large sums of money will arrive in my account soon.”

"Hehe, it's a small investment. We will launch trust financing soon, and the bigger moves are yet to come."

"Okay, thank you for your understanding. I will arrange for Mr. Bi to come over immediately to sign the contract and start construction. We will strive to start the overall pre-sale as soon as possible."

"The people from BOE will arrive in the next couple of days."

"OK, bye."

Chen Xuebing hung up the phone, checked the time, and said to Goto Miki, "Call and ask Kenbun if the Goldman Sachs people have arrived yet." He rushed to Shanghai today to finalize the Shanghai headquarters building deal.

Coincidentally, among the several office buildings for sale that Rong Xianwen selected in Shanghai, the only one with a suitable price and location was the Gaoteng Building, owned by Goldman Sachs Asia Real Estate Direct Investment Fund.

This building is located at No. 318 Fuzhou Road, Huangpu District. It has a total construction area of ​​5.2 square meters and 24 floors. It is located only one kilometer away from Lujiazui, the area where the Suzhou River and Huangpu River meet, which is known in later generations as "Shanghai's best location for taking pictures". It is just one street away.

Goldman Sachs is asking for $1.5 million, which, at the current exchange rate of 7.74, is 11.61 billion RMB.

The group had just set aside 12.3 billion yuan for the purchase of land in Chengdu.

Chen Xuebing plans to go to Xiaodao today, take over the building, and then talk to Pudong Development Bank about the loan.

With the loan secured, he can then use the profits from his TMT fund in BOE Technology Group to fund the future expansion of Qidian and Gu'an Construction.

Rong Xianwen was in charge of liaising with Goldman Sachs, and Kan Zhidong was also waiting at the Pudong Development Bank headquarters; everyone was racing against time for him.

Miki Goto, in the passenger seat, was looking at a text message from Rong Xianwen on her phone. She turned her head and said, "The Goldman Sachs people have arrived."

Then her expression froze for a moment, and she added, "However, the person who came was of a higher rank, and Xianwen said something was amiss."

Chen Xuebing raised an eyebrow: "Who's here?"

"Hu Zuliu, Managing Director of Goldman Sachs Asia."

After Goto Miki said those words, the two of them fell silent for a moment.

It's definitely suspicious that the Asian general manager of a real estate fund would personally get involved in a transaction.

Rong Xianwen must have been bewildered.

However, since Goto Miki had been following Chen Xuebing, she had more information. After thinking for a moment, she turned around and guessed, "Could it be about Singularity's financing?"

Chen Xuebing stroked his chin and nodded slowly.

"No one gets up early without a reason, but they got up a little late this time."

On the quiet Fuzhou Road, next to a chic cafe, a Porsche Cayenne is parked.

As the Maybach pulled up close to the BMW, people by the coffee shop's floor-to-ceiling windows glanced over, realizing that important figures were meeting there, and some took out cameras and phones to take pictures.

As Chen Xuebing walked into the coffee shop, he immediately spotted a few people sitting in the corner and reached out his hand as he walked.

"President Hu! What brings you here?"

A middle-aged man with a neat, short-haired Malay appearance stood up and spoke with a Hunan accent: "Hello, Mr. Chen, it's an honor to meet you."

As Hu Zuliu shook hands with Chen Xuebing, a hint of surprise flashed in his eyes, but he quickly concealed it.

He had read a lot of information about Chen Xuebing these past two days, but hearing that he was very young and seeing him in person were two different things.

Mr. Chen, who started from scratch and became a prominent figure in the financial market, is at most in his early twenties.

"Mr. Chen has invested so much money in the United States and also bought a building in Shanghai. His financial strength is indeed formidable," Hu Zuliu exclaimed.

"Hehe, Mr. Hu, you misunderstand. The additional two hundred million US dollars I invested later was intended to be financed through a trust in China. I don't have that much money. I was hoping that Goldman Sachs could help me get a better price. Otherwise, after buying the building, I wouldn't even be able to afford the renovations."

Mr. Chen is here to negotiate the price. It's really not appropriate to show off his wealth in this situation. He should just pretend to be poor. He has no psychological burden at all.

"Mr. Chen is joking. Such a large group company has not received a single penny of financing to date. If Mr. Chen wants money, there are plenty of people willing to give it to you. That's exactly what I came here for today."

"As for the money, there's no rush, it's not the right time yet," Chen Xuebing immediately changed his tune.

The two sat down.

Hu Zuliu took a sip of coffee, showing no reaction to Chen Xuebing's refusal, and said calmly, "I've looked at your valuation documents. You're undergoing a shareholding reform, aren't you? You really don't want to raise funds?"

"decide as things go."

"I heard that your company has already set up a branch in Silicon Valley, and Mr. Chen just came back from there, right? Your American company is still negotiating purchases with several server manufacturers and checking the order cycle. It should be operational soon?"

Hu Zuliu demonstrated Goldman Sachs's information control capabilities in the United States and slowly said, "If your products want to go overseas, Goldman Sachs can be your strategic investor. We can provide you with communication channels with upstream and downstream manufacturers all over the world."

Chen Xuebing suddenly laughed: "Mr. Hu, you've found out so much about me, but you haven't found out about my temperament? I don't like people doing business with me like this."

As he spoke, he picked up his phone to check the message from Changzheng Capital and said, "Mr. Hu, you've been working on Hainan Airlines' convertible bonds lately, haven't you? The design is quite good. It's a debt-to-equity swap at 7.5 yuan per share, with an investment of 150 million US dollars, and the option can be exercised over three years. Theoretically, it avoids the approval limit for foreign shareholding, and there's also a betting clause against stock price declines, so you won't lose money whether the price goes up or down. However, I think this betting design has the suspicion of indirectly shorting a pillar industry of the country. Mr. Hu, I also have some connections in Hainan. Since you don't have an assessment of the future stock market situation, how about inviting me to be Goldman Sachs' China strategic partner? I do have some judgment on the stock market situation, so that you don't keep making money this way and get reported one day."

If Goldman Sachs can find out his itinerary in the United States, then he certainly has information about Goldman Sachs' investments in China.

Today, Changzheng Capital's information reach is getting wider and wider. The fact that he was able to obtain this information in just over forty minutes from Pudong Airport also demonstrates his information control capabilities.

“Mr. Chen, that’s not what I meant. Our headquarters just did some due diligence on your investment.” Hu Zuliu explained, but he didn’t seem flustered. Instead, his smile deepened. “Since you have such influence in China and such good products, why limit your focus to China? Isn’t it better to have Goldman Sachs help you expand your market overseas?”

When he arrived, he already knew that Kirin phones had not applied for overseas sales and there was no promotional information in the United States. He concluded that Kirin was being held back by its competitors and was trying to open up the market through its US subsidiary.

Chen Xuebing waved his hand: "Let me be frank. Goldman Sachs invests in too many high-tech companies, and your focus is too scattered, so it won't be of much help to me. Your due diligence is also not comprehensive. Our products are not sold overseas because of communication protocol restrictions, not because we can't find sales channels. Mr. Hu seems to not understand mobile phones, so I won't talk too much about it. Since Goldman Sachs wants to invest, I'll say a core condition: Singularity needs a strategic investor who will wholeheartedly support us and help us establish all the overseas political and business relationships we need. As for the return, it will be at least twenty times within three years. If Mr. Hu doesn't understand why it's twenty times, then we'll redo the due diligence on the product technology."

For an institution like Goldman Sachs with its own intelligence system, there's not much to explain. If you want to know something, do your own research and make your own judgment.

“I understand.” Hu Zuliu nodded. “May I ask how many shares you plan to offer for financing?”

"After the listing, I want to retain a relative controlling stake," Chen Xuebing said succinctly.

51%.

This is an almost impossible number for listed companies, especially listed technology companies.

However, considering that Singularity currently has zero funding, it doesn't seem like an exaggeration.

It is extremely rare in the world for a tech company with a valuation of several billion to have no history of financing.

Hu Zuliu also became a little curious.

"Okay, we'll look into it further. When do you plan to raise funds?"

"I will send you invitations in June or July, or maybe later."

"OK." After saying that, Hu Zuliu prepared to get up and leave.

"What about the Gaoteng Building? Mr. Hu, won't you offer some discounts?" Chen Xuebing asked.

Hu Zuliu grinned and pointed to a middle-aged man next to him: "Excuse me, Mr. Chen, I'm not in charge of this. His name is Li Zhen, the person in charge of GSAM. He'll talk to you."

After saying that, he left at a speed comparable to fleeing.

The way he looked, as if he was afraid of being taken advantage of in the slightest, made Chen Xuebing laugh in exasperation.

Okay, okay, this is how you play, right?
(End of this chapter)