A genius student? Ha, they're nothing but ants at your feet!

Root, standing to the side, was stunned and asked in surprise:

"Not getting involved in games? Then... what will happen to our MIT Simulator?"

"Rest assured, Skyline is a company full of humanistic care, and we fully respect everyone's creative freedom in art."

Once you sign the contract, we will fully fund all expenses of 'Spectra Works'.

You can take the best equipment in the world and continue developing the games you love.

Ethan paused for a moment, then continued to offer his chips:

"After careful calculation, the company's overall valuation for 'Spectra Works' is ten million US dollars."

Of course, this includes full ownership of the Synapse engine.

This figure, which far exceeded expectations, left the three college students speechless.

Entropy was the first to come to his senses.

She forced her wildly beating heart to open the thick contract.

Read it line by line.

The terms are clearly written in black and white:

Skyline will invest $51 million in installments in exchange for acquiring a 51% controlling stake in Spectra Works.

Entropy stared intently at the number and muttered to himself:

"Fifty-one percent equity stake..."

This is essentially a full acquisition; from now on, they will have the final say on all decisions regarding the studio.

Upon hearing this muttering, Ethan did not deny it, but instead nodded slightly, seemingly unconcerned.

"This wise lady understands that the business world is like a battlefield; this is the most basic logic of risk aversion. Only by holding more than half of the absolute shares in one's own hands..."

Only with sufficient resources and justification can Skyline headquarters afford to take on potential market risks and mobilize all resources to vigorously advance the project.

As for the remaining 49% of shares, your team will negotiate and allocate them internally.

He abruptly changed the subject, his gaze fixed intently on Su Hao, who had remained silent.

"And Mr. Su Hao, as the core architect of the engine, in consideration of your outstanding contributions."

Once you sign, Skyline will pay you an additional $1 million personal signing bonus.

The only additional condition is:

After graduating from university, you must join Skyline as the chief person in charge of the engine development project, with a term of no less than three years.

After saying this, Ethan leaned back in his chair, a confident smile playing on his lips.

He was secretly certain in his heart.

This group of poor college students with no connections, who even had to carefully budget for server fees of a few hundred dollars.

Absolutely, absolutely impossible to refuse this life-changing, astronomical contract!

In fact, the reason for this acquisition was quite absurd.

One of the core employees in the Skyline AI R&D department stumbled upon this wildly popular game while slacking off.

The next morning, the guy, with bloodshot eyes and a fanatical expression, blocked his office door.

There is no other reason.

This is solely due to the underlying engine technology of this game.

Its level of advancement is far ahead of the top-secret project that Skyline is currently working on with hundreds of millions of dollars invested in, and it is a whole era ahead of it!

To know.

Skyline's current core AI research team comprises over fifty industry leaders recruited from top laboratories around the world with high salaries!

But the employee confessed in despair:

Even if these top industry elites worked tirelessly for another five years, they still couldn't guarantee achieving the same level of technological closure!

They couldn't even touch the threshold!

Therefore, from Ethan's perspective, what about the mere five million dollars acquisition price?

This is simply taking advantage of someone's misfortune!

It's a cheap deal that's incredibly profitable, even making people laugh out loud!

Furthermore, that employee had strongly emphasized:

The engine architect who wrote this code must be bound to the company like a kidnapping!

This ingenious AI engine has an extremely strong personal style and is not replicable in its structure.

That involves fine-tuning hundreds of algorithm parameters!

It's a behavioral logic model that's like a miracle!

It features a high-concurrency caching strategy and underlying optimized code that are ahead of their time!

It involves handling redundant interference between multiple algorithms!

All of this constitutes a perfect ecological sandbox.

Even the slightest change to a single, tiny piece of underlying logic code can completely destroy the self-consistency of the entire engine!

Therefore, buying code is useless.

We must swallow the entire underlying ecosystem, including that genius architect himself, whole!

Even now, Ethan still finds it unbelievable as he looks at the excessively young Su Hao in front of him.

Skyline has invested the entire company's resources over five years to build a technological barrier that is difficult to overcome.

He had been easily defeated by this young man in front of him, who even had a bit of a student-like air about him!

However, the core reason why Ethan and even the Skyline executives were so envious that they went crazy and were willing to use any means to acquire this engine was the real reason.

It's not some bullshit game or smart city construction at all.

Rather, it is the unfathomable "military strategic value" behind this engine that is capable of causing global turmoil!

Ethan had mentally rehearsed countless scenarios:

If we slightly modify this algorithm, which possesses terrifying computational capabilities...

It is directly connected to the control center of the military's latest military swarm drone.

What level of qualitative change would that trigger, enough to destroy the existing tactical system?!

By then.

Every independently operating drone flying in the sky will no longer be a rigid machine.

They will all possess independent thinking abilities like those of special forces soldiers!

It can calculate the optimal tactical breakthrough and suicide attack route in a fraction of a second without even needing instructions from humans behind it!

This is absolutely a strategic weapon capable of completely revolutionizing the form of modern warfare!

What's even more frightening is that its applications extend far beyond this!

Whether it's using massive data streams to predict the tactical movements of enemy heavy armored formations on the plains.

The analysis focuses on the complex behavioral logic of each civilian and armed individual in high-intensity urban street fighting.

It can demonstrate terrifying computing power suppression, like a god's-eye view, in extremely complex holographic battlefield simulations!

Thinking of this, Ethan subtly adjusted his posture, trying to hide his rapid breathing.

He was like a patient viper, watching these naive young people before him.

Quietly await the moment when they sign the contract and surrender their souls.

In the brutal, winner-takes-all global AI arms race.

Morality, bottom line—it's all bullshit!

Only absolute technological monopoly can be the ultimate rule for all rules!

The Skyline board had already issued a death order.

We will never allow any organization other than ourselves to interfere with this groundbreaking Synapse engine!

However, just when Ethan thought everything was under control and was ready to pop the champagne to celebrate...

Suddenly, his keen business sense detected something amiss.

Something's off!

The students, who should have been overjoyed and wanting to kneel down in gratitude upon seeing that ten million dollars, were...

His expression, after reading the terms, suddenly darkened completely, like a storm cloud.