AI (1)
Korea's Silicon Valley, Pangyo.
Pangyo was packed with countless startups. Among them, the AI startup Phoenix AI held a place of its own.
Inside Phoenix AI's server room, a table at the back was buried under a chaotic scatter of laptops and project proposals. And like every other startup server room, two employees sat there, thoroughly worn down by the work.
Development lead Team Leader Gong Min-jae scratched his head and asked the new hire, Sujin.
"The boss and the director still couldn't get any GPUs?"
"No real update yet."
Team Leader Gong started grumbling.
"Come on. How are we supposed to build AI without GPUs?"
"We do have some."
"Barely ten of them?"
"The boss said it himself. Don't think of the glass as half empty—think of it as half full. Tell yourself we've got a whole ten GPUs."
"The Americans are running thousands, tens of thousands. Give us half that and then maybe we can actually develop something."
"What do you want us to do about what we don't have? The director said he might score a few more if things go well today."
"Really? I joined because they said Phoenix was an AI company. Now they're telling me to build AI with ten GPUs and I just feel drained."
"Who knows? That place called JH supposedly developed something even better."
Team Leader Gong leaned back in his chair.
"Yeah, right. How would we even get our hands on that? I heard people are lining up. Supply shortage. Whatever price they name, that's the price."
"I know. But still—nothing we can do about it."
"Places like Amazo have plenty. Sujin, when the boss gets here, try asking him to rent from Amazo's data center."
"Me?"
"Yeah. The boss likes you. Throw a little tantrum. Tell him you can't stand working with only ten GPUs anymore—it's too frustrating."
Sujin snorted.
"I'll admit I'm pretty, but if I pull that with the boss I'll get fired in the prettiest way possible. Amazo's way too expensive. Even if we had the money, a nobody outfit like us wouldn't even get a chance."
"Haaah…"
Team Leader Gong sank deeper into his chair.
Whiiiiir.
The machines in the server room kept grinding away.
"When's that one going to finish?"
At Sujin's question, Team Leader Gong glanced at his laptop and answered flatly.
"The render we kicked off… let's see… about twenty hours left."
"Stop whining about GPUs and write some optimization code. The director told you to get the optimization done before he left earlier."
"Seriously? Do you know how many times I've already optimized this?"
"No idea."
"I stopped counting after twenty. I've been pinching and scraping every last resource until I feel like a total miser. Eat once, check the GPUs. Eat once, check the GPUs again."
"Still, at least you have ten."
"Sujin. I'm the team leader and you're a regular employee… so why do I feel like I'm the one being trained here?"
"Because I'm the boss's niece. And I'm the one who spotted your skills and pushed hard to scout you."
Team Leader Gong let out a long sigh.
"Ugh… this damn 'okay, fine' attitude of mine… Does JH even hire people?"
Sujin's brow furrowed.
"Why? Thinking of jumping ship?"
Team Leader Gong shrugged.
"If they'd take me, no reason not to go. You heard too, right? LPU, Blue Tower! Man! I hear that LPU is absolutely insane. And Blue Tower? Supposedly a thousand times faster than the GPUs we're using."
"Really?"
"The big American tech companies are lining up for it right now. People are pitching tents outside the door and camping overnight, I hear."
"Wow, nice."
"Where? JH? Or the big tech companies?"
"JH, of course. They're going to make a fortune."
"I'm more jealous of the American big tech. Running AI on something a thousand times faster than this? Wow. What could you even build with that? Training would just fly."
"True enough."
"With that kind of performance… work that would take us a year would finish in a day."
Team Leader Gong tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling.
"Haaah… I'm seriously jealous."
"Instead of being jealous, check the render."
"Yes, yes, Niece-nim."
Just then another employee poked their head into the server room from outside.
"The director's here!"
The door opened and the director, back from his field trip, walked into the server room. Team Leader Gong and Sujin's eyes locked onto him at once.
"You're back?"
The director stepped through the doorway and dramatically raised the box in his hand. A large shopping bag.
"I came. I saw. I brought. Worship me."
"Ooooh!"
"No way—you actually got GPUs?"
The director grinned like a conqueror.
"Hahaha! Of course!"
"How many?"
"More than five?"
Team Leader Gong and Sujin fired the questions one after another while watching his smile. The director answered awkwardly.
"Ahem. A bit fewer than that."
"Four…?"
He shook his head.
"Three?"
Side to side.
"Don't tell me… one?"
"Bingo. But hey, look at it this way. That's ten percent of our company's entire GPU inventory! Right?"
Sujin forced a smile.
"Well… true."
Team Leader Gong managed a reluctant grin of his own.
"Still, thanks for going out and getting it."
"Hook it up."
"We're mid-render right now."
"Can't you just stop it?"
"Then we'd have to start the whole thing over."
Sujin cut in.
"Once we slot in a new GPU we'll have to restart anyway. Just stop it."
"Yeah, fair point. Let's do it."
The GPU swap began. Team Leader Gong stood up and unplugged the cables one by one. The whining roar of the machines faded until the room fell quiet. Only the cooling fans kept spinning out of habit.
"Watch the static on this."
Team Leader Gong and Sujin fitted the card into the slot together.
"Careful, Sujin. This thing costs more than your monthly salary."
"What are you talking about? It's more expensive than my annual salary."
"Right here—this port. Third PCIe slot. On three, push it in smooth. One, two, three!"
Click!
The GPU seated into the slot. For a second all three of them held their breath.
"Done."
Team Leader Gong allowed himself a small smile. Power came back on and red and blue lights flickered through the server room. The new GPU's fans began to spin slowly.
"We're up from ten to eleven. I'll restart the model."
He clicked the mouse and training logs began scrolling down the monitor. The GPU utilization graph rose and fell in a neat wave.
"Well? Feel like the performance just jumped?"
The director asked with his arms crossed.
Team Leader Gong nodded.
"Of course."
"Alright, keep at it."
"Yes, sir."
Once the director left, the tension among the staff eased.
"So? Did the performance actually jump?"
Team Leader Gong thought for a moment, then laughed.
"Like digging a hole with a cotton swab in the army and then switching to an earpick."
"What? Is that better or worse?"
Right then the office staff poked their head in again.
"The boss is here. He wants everyone assembled."
"Oh. Thanks."
Team Leader Gong and Sujin headed for the conference room. They wondered if the boss was calling everyone because the GPU count had gone up.
Once the entire staff had gathered, the CEO spoke.
"I have a major announcement."
Major announcement? The employees watched him carefully.
"We have received an acquisition offer for Phoenix AI."
A ripple of murmurs. An M&A proposal was no small thing.
One employee asked cautiously.
"From who?"
"JH."
Eyes lit up. The murmuring grew louder.
"What about us?"
"They said one-hundred-percent succession."
Relief washed over the staff. But the CEO still hadn't said he would accept the offer.
"I thought about it long and hard. We set out as an AI company hoping to change the world, but after running around trying to buy GPUs… I felt the limits pretty hard. You need the tools before you can develop anything, and GPUs have been incredibly hard to get."
The employees listened in tense silence. Accepting JH's offer was entirely the CEO's decision.
"I thought about it a great deal. When we can't even secure GPUs, trying to develop AI is unrealistic. So… I will accept JH's acquisition offer."
Team Leader Gong clenched his fist tight.
JH Research.
The newly joining employees carefully took their seats in the spacious conference room. Today was the day they would meet the Phoenix AI staff.
I pushed my wheelchair into place.
There were roughly twenty new employees joining us.
"Hello."
I smiled as I greeted them.
"I'm Kim Jiho, CEO of JH."
The new employees bowed. They looked tense.
"I thought long and hard about whether to keep Phoenix AI as a subsidiary of JH or to fully absorb it."
I paused and studied their faces.
"But when you're developing AI… security issues are almost inevitable. So I decided to fully absorb Phoenix AI into JH."
The employees seemed to understand. White Dragon Tech was just an assembly-line company. No special technology, so leaving it as a simple subsidiary was fine. Phoenix AI was different. It would become the core of JH's work with data centers and AI cores.
I turned to Chief of Staff Jang Dae-shik standing beside me.
"Chief Jang. Please arrange housing for any employees who would have trouble commuting."
"Understood."
A low buzz of conversation immediately rose around the conference room. Employees whispered with wide eyes.
"They have company housing too…"
"For real? They're going this far?"
"Wow… big companies really are different."
I smiled. Our operating margin was absurdly high compared to other companies—though that was still private. An operating margin of ninety percent. A 5-Circle Mage designing semiconductors for free. The upkeep for a semiconductor plant employing tens of thousands of workers amounting to a single breadcrumb. I couldn't even say the number out loud without people accusing me of lying.
So the company had plenty of money and semiconductors. Pouring resources into employee benefits and raising loyalty was the smart move. Holding onto the cash would only mean paying more taxes anyway.
I looked at the Phoenix staff and said,
"Shall we head to the AI lab?"
We had converted an entire floor of the building for AI work. We rode the elevator down. The AI lab took up the whole floor and had been completely renovated.
I spoke to the engineer in charge of the lab.
"Connect to the data center."
"Yes, sir."
The engineer sat down and started typing. A few seconds later, a connection success message appeared on the monitor.
Connected: JH Data Center ― Core Node #001
"The hardware side is mostly complete now. From here on we build the software side—the brain of the AI."
I looked around at the employees.
"I'm counting on the AI team to put in the work."
They all nodded as one.
One employee carefully raised a hand.
"CEO. May I ask a question?"
"Of course. Go ahead."
"Hello. I'm Team Leader Gong Min-jae."
He looked sharp and energetic. Nice to see.
"Yes, Team Leader Gong Min-jae. What would you like to know?"
"I'm curious about the development direction. What type of AI are you planning to build?"
"We're aiming for conversational, generative AI first. There's open-source material available, so it should be doable."
"Wow! Conversational, generative AI?"
"Is there another kind?"
"We were developing a recognition AI that only judged whether a person was present or not, and whether it was a person or not."
"Is that so? That's impressive too. What was your recognition rate?"
"For the two questions—is a person present or not, is it a person or not—our consecutive accuracy was about forty percent."
"Well. If you guess one it's fifty percent. Guessing two in a row correctly is twenty-five percent, so forty percent is actually pretty solid."
"Right."
I smiled and said,
"Then how about we run that one first?"
"Right now?"
"Yes. That's basically the Phoenix team's portfolio, isn't it? Let's take a look at the Phoenix AI team's skills."