LPU (2)
“Aww… I’m so moved. We actually have the real thing in our company…”
“Right? I’m about to cry. This is emotional.”
“Why are you crying? Don’t cry.”
Watching the LPU units get delivered, the employees’ eyes went red. A few of the women were actually crying.
Before I knew it, Chief of Staff Jang had come up beside me, and I spoke to him.
“Chief Jang. The staff seem really happy. I didn’t expect tears.”
“Of course. When the company does well, employee morale rises with it.”
Morale, huh.
I didn’t really know how you were supposed to raise it, but looking at them now, it seemed to be working.
I was watching their reactions with mild curiosity when Jang quietly opened his mouth again.
“Truth is, the employees have been feeling anxious for a while.”
“Anxious?”
My head tilted slightly. I didn’t get it. Why would they be anxious?
Wasn’t anxiety something reserved for people working with both legs gone, paying hospital bills for a single mother who collapsed from a brain hemorrhage?
A gorgeous building. Plenty of capital. Their CEO had given a presentation at CES and was networking with the heads of ultra-mega corporations. By any standard, this was a company on the rise. And yet people with two perfectly good legs, holding regular full-time jobs at a place like that… why would they feel anxious?
Reading my expression, Chief of Staff Jang Dae-shik explained.
“You’re exceptional, sir, and the company’s technology is the best there is. But the individual employees don’t really have any special skills of their own, do they? We’re a semiconductor research institute, yet a lot of them have never even seen a finished product. So they were worried they might be working for a ghost company.”
“Koff— a ghost company?”
I nearly choked. Honestly, it was a little absurd.
Aaron Merks had sent a private jet. Wilson Hwang had gone out of his way to get my number. And this was a ghost company? Were those hyper-billionaires in the habit of dealing with ghost companies?
It still didn’t make sense. Was this… that gap between a CEO and the staff?
I was realizing just how differently I and my employees could see the same thing.
“It’s an incredible company, but the employees are completely ordinary. Even I am very weak on semiconductor technology. Most of the staff could be swapped out for anyone else without any real problem—and they know that perfectly well.”
“Hmm…”
“They never felt they were essential to the company. Then they saw this mountain of actual product and thought, maybe they do need us after all—and they felt relief.”
Good grief. I even had to manage the employees’ self-esteem… being a CEO was hard. Until recently I’d been the one being looked after; now I had to look after them, and it felt like wearing clothes that didn’t fit.
Still—they were my people. I couldn’t hear something like that and just sit on my hands.
“Chief Jang. Then how do we reduce their anxiety?”
Jang smiled.
“Simple. Work them hard.”
What was that supposed to mean? As a rookie CEO, I found it hard to follow.
“They’re anxious because they have too much time to think. Keep them busy and they won’t have room to be anxious.”
“Wouldn’t that just turn anxiety into resentment?”
“Then you give them performance bonuses.”
“Haha. You’re ruthless.”
“I put them to work and pay them for it—how is that ruthless? Ruthless is when you hold back their salaries.”
It sounded right and wrong at the same time. There was so much I still had to learn. Magic. Semiconductors. Everything a CEO was supposed to do.
The Chief of Staff made a little mouth-flapping gesture with his fingers.
“Ah—of course, management is your job, sir. I’m only offering an opinion. I’m a staff officer. A staff officer.”
The employees’ anxiety did sound real enough, and if my right-hand man said so… There was no shortage of work to do, or work to assign. And we had only just taken delivery of a massive batch of product.
“Chief. Call an all-hands meeting in one hour. Gather every employee.”
“Understood.”
Jang looked curious about what I was planning. Meeting that look, I said:
“I’m going to take my staff officer’s advice and run some company-loyalty training. When Zhuge Liang makes a recommendation, shouldn’t Liu Bei follow it?”
“Oh my. Understood.”
Everyone assembled in the conference room.
I looked at Security Director Cha Kang-jin and asked:
“Director Cha.”
“Yes.”
“How are you handling security for the chips?”
“We’ve already installed bank-vault-grade locking systems. Security will run on three shifts.”
“I see. Are you confident you could keep them from being taken even if armed gunmen broke in?”
Cha looked slightly flustered.
“Guns… sir?”
“Yes. Guns. You’ve already experienced that once.”
“Mmm… for external security we have Mr. Black, so against roughly twenty armed men I believe we could hold.”
I shook my head.
“No. Mr. Black protects me. When I move, Mr. Black and his team move with me. You still have to be able to protect the chips.”
“In that case… frankly, our current headcount isn’t enough.”
“Armed hostiles. We can write off the first time as ignorance—we cannot afford a second. Our technology was world number one then, and it still is now. And now we have piles of world-number-one product sitting here. Draw up a plan that can stop armed forces even without Mr. Black’s team—manpower needed, budget, and operational approach—and report back.”
“Yes. Understood.”
I turned my head another way.
“HR Manager.”
“Yes.”
“We’re at twenty employees right now, correct?”
“Yes.”
“That won’t cut it. Even if we run a pure B2B business, if we’re going to collaborate worldwide the organization has to grow. Put a plan on my desk.”
“How large are you thinking of taking the company?”
“Company scale?”
“Yes.”
In that moment I could feel every employee in the room locking on. Ah. So this was that famous scene—the CEO publicly laying out the company’s vision for the staff.
“Three months ago we commissioned TSNC to produce roughly thirty thousand chips.”
Someone tilted their head.
“This delivery was twenty-one thousand good units and ten thousand rejects. You might think that means twenty-one thousand, but I have my own view. Let’s count it as thirty thousand. Then in twelve months that’s a hundred twenty thousand. Accounting for the fact that this was the first run, if we renegotiate with TSNC or diversify our foundries, we can produce hundreds of thousands of chips a year.”
Heads nodded around the table.
“We’ve also already shown the Blue Tower HBM. We haven’t mass-produced it yet, but a lot of people are wondering what kind of monster you get when you put a Blue Tower on a petabyte-class LPU.”
I saw an employee clench a fist and swallow hard.
“Right now, not counting security, we’re only twenty people. Bring me an organizational plan that can run the scale I just described without friction.”
“Understood.”
I turned to the next person.
“Planning Director.”
“An hour ago we published the semiconductor chip specs on the company website. And looking at the online papers, articles about petabyte-class processing units have started going up. We’re going to get calls from all over. Draw up a plan for whom we sell to, and at what price, and report.”
“Understood.”
Knock knock.
A knock sounded, and Secretary Hwang came in.
“Sir, I’m sorry to interrupt the meeting. There’s a call from OpenAI in the United States.”
“From where?”
“OpenAI, sir.”
A murmur ran through the room. OpenAI—the company that had stunned the world with conversational AI. The company that had rewritten the rules of search. Old internet search was keyword-based. The AI OpenAI released let you chat the way you talk to a person. A company that opened an age where users didn’t have to dig for answers—the AI just told them. That was OpenAI.
“Hmm… Sales Team Lead.”
“…Yes?”
Calling the sales lead seemed to startle him a little.
“Take the call with OpenAI.”
“M-me, sir?”
“When we sell product to another company, isn’t Sales the first one who has to step up?”
“That’s correct.”
“It’s probably about the LPU chips. Find out how many they want and what price range they’re thinking, and report. I’m not asking you to decide on the spot—hear their terms and bring them back.”
“Understood.”
He looked tense. Fair enough—a deal with OpenAI. He’d probably never handled a transaction on that scale himself. But this was a company that needed to get used to exactly that kind of thing.
Knock knock.
Secretary Hwang, who had just left, came back in. What had OpenAI said?
“Secretary Hwang. What is it?”
“Sir. Amazo is on the line.”
The conference room went quiet again.
“Amazo as in… Amazo, the world’s largest delivery company?”
“Yes. I checked several times. That Amazo.”
Amazo, the world’s largest shipping company. I’d been showing off a semiconductor chip—the LPU. Why would a delivery company be calling?
Anyone who knew, knew: Amazo was the world’s largest logistics, parcel, and delivery company—and also the number-one cloud-services company on the planet. Cloud service meant not storing data on your own computer or phone, but on a company’s servers over the internet. The chat conversations on your smartphone, Nertube videos, Stargram photos, online game data… none of it lived only on your phone. It lived on cloud servers. Log in from another computer and you could pull it all up the same way.
OpenAI had just called. That OpenAI AI also ran on other companies’ cloud servers. And the company holding thirty percent of the entire global cloud market was Amazo. Microsofft was number two and Gogle number three—you had to add those two together to match Amazo. So this wasn’t a delivery call. It was the world’s number-one cloud company wanting our chips.
I turned my head. Somehow everyone seemed to be avoiding my eyes.
“Manager?”
“Ah! Yes!”
At being named, the manager scrambled. He already seemed to know what I was about to assign—and to be panicking about it.
“I’m giving you Amazo.”
“What—yes!”
His face flushed red. Facing Amazo one-on-one—he looked terrified and, at the same time, thrilled.
Knock knock.
Secretary Hwang came in again.
“Where is it this time?”
“A call from Future Motors. They want chips for autonomous-driving AI.”
Korea’s number-one automobile company, and one of the top three in the world by production volume.
I turned my head. There were no team leads or managers left free.
“Assistant Manager Choi.”
“Ah—yes!”
“You’ll handle Future Motors.”
“Understood.”
I could almost see Assistant Manager Choi’s nose growing an inch with pride.
Hmm? Scanning the employees again, I spotted a face I didn’t know.
“The person next to Assistant Manager Choi—who is that?”
Choi answered for him.
“Sorry, sir. You said everyone should attend, so I brought him. He’s an intern.”
“Ah, right. I did. I remember now.”
I recalled the report Jang had given about a week earlier. The youth internship program, was it? Not mandatory, but the government was pushing it to expand young people’s employment. We didn’t need the program, but it was a chance to get a look at sharp young talent early—no reason to refuse.
“If you’re an intern, you came to gain experience, right? How about it? Want to get some?”
The intern clenched a fist and answered firmly.
“Yes! I’ll give it everything I have.”
Good attitude.
“When the next call comes in, the intern takes it. You know we’re scaling the company, right? Do well this time and I’ll put heavy bonus points on your record.”
“Thank you.”
Maybe he saw it as a chance handed to him personally. The intern’s eyes were blazing.
Knock knock.
Secretary Hwang entered. Who was it this time?
Everyone’s eyes fixed on Hwang—and on the intern.
“It’s the Vice President of the United States on the line.”
Slowly, I turned my head and met the intern’s eyes.
His gaze was shaking. His lips looked like they were turning blue.