I Will Reveal the Truth (3)
[Excerpt]
Despite being founded only three years ago, Cooloud had grown at a startling pace, rocketing all the way up to fourth place in the cloud industry.
At the center of that rise was an artificial intelligence program called Minerva.
Minerva was said to outperform every program used by other cloud companies.
Cooloud’s founder and CEO, Rolf Buchi, had claimed dozens of times that he had developed Minerva himself, and he had even told stories about how the program came to be.
But all of it had been a lie.
The real developer was his MIT classmate, Jason Kim, and the program’s true name was not Minerva at all, but Mimir.
Jason Kim had built the program alone, without anyone else’s help, intending to use it as the foundation for his own startup.
Along the way, he had shown the program to Rolf Buchi and asked for advice. But before he could launch his company, Jason Kim died in a tragic accident. After learning of his death, Rolf Buchi stole the program and publicly claimed it as his own creation.
Thanks to betraying his dead friend, Rolf Buchi was able to seize both the reputation of a Silicon Valley genius and immense wealth.
The whistleblower who brought this to light, Ranjin Kumar, was not merely raising suspicions.
The article even included an exclusive interview with Ranjin Kumar. Presenting multiple pieces of evidence, he savaged Rolf Buchi without mercy.
The internet exploded.
Reading the article and the comments, my whole body started trembling.
My phone kept ringing without pause, and messages kept flooding in from every direction. Everyone was asking whether the article was true.
I couldn’t make sense of it.
How did Ranjin find this out?
Then one name surfaced in my mind.
I called Rolf right away.
"Hello?"
"What the hell is going on!?" he shouted.
"What is?"
"The article that’s out right now! Are you pretending you don’t know?"
"Ah, that? I saw it too."
"That’s not what you promised!"
"What promise?"
"You said you’d keep it secret!"
"Did I say that? I don’t remember."
"You definitely did!"
"Did I? And what does that have to do with me?"
"...What?"
"I’m not the one who exposed it, and the fact that some former business partner did—what am I supposed to do about that?"
At that, Rolf was momentarily speechless.
"Y-you were the one who told him!"
I had no proof, but I was certain.
"If that’s how you want to see it, then there’s nothing I can do."
"Why? Why did you break your promise?"
"I heard someone say that promises made with words are okay to break."
"...What?"
The one who had said that was none other than me.
Rolf screamed at me.
"You think I’m just going to sit still after this!"
At his outburst, I answered lazily, "What if you don’t?"
"What?"
"Are you going to sue me? At this point, if you try to sue me, you’ll only become the joke."
Rolf said in a voice that sounded close to tears, "W-why are you doing this to me? Do you have some kind of grudge against me?"
"Of course not. I don’t have any feelings toward you. To be exact, I don’t even have the slightest interest in you."
"T-then why are you doing this?"
I gave him the answer in one sentence.
"Because it’s the truth."
Rolf collapsed to the floor and burst into tears, howling.
"Krrraaaah!"
Watching Rolf cry like that, I felt a little sorry for him.
Still, even if I hadn’t done it, the truth would have come out eventually. In the first life, he had been driven out of the company anyway and was forced to give up part of his stake.
So did Rolf live a hard life after that?
Not at all.
He still held more than ten percent of Cooloud’s shares, which meant his net worth was still over $100 billion.
With that much money, did a little public hate really matter?
But this time would be different. All he had left was a mere only $1 billion.
Well, even so, he could still live happily with that kind of money. Of course, he’d have to endure being hated for the rest of his life.
Ranjin Kumar tore into Rolf like a fish thrown back into water, practically thriving on the scandal. He’d probably publish a book soon, too.
The fallout from the exposé was bigger than I’d expected, but it still wasn’t as explosive as the Thomas Motors disaster.
Cooloud’s market cap was more than twice as large, but Thomas Motors was a B2C company and a public one at that, so it had a lot of retail shareholders. Cooloud, on the other hand, was B2B and still private.
When your own money isn’t on the line, you naturally care a little less.
But the shock among people in the industry was even greater. After Mercedes Watson and Brad Burton, another self-made myth had collapsed.
Cooloud’s corporate value had probably taken a serious hit from this alone.
Still, since the damage didn’t touch the company’s essential value, customer defections would likely remain limited.
After that, the news of Continue Capital’s acquisition came out.
Following the Thomas Motors scandal with a successful acquisition of Cooloud as well, David Lockhart’s reputation rose even higher.
That was the end of our schedule in Silicon Valley.
With the job done, we decided to head back to New York.
We had secured everything I’d set out to get before coming here. Above all, I’d succeeded in acquiring Cooloud, which would go on to become the world’s largest company in the future.
Even knowing the future, it hadn’t been easy.
In the past, I would have assumed it would fail in advance, never even bothered to try, and given up. But not anymore.
Was this proof that I’d changed, too?
Sid asked me,
"Hyung, what are you going to do now?"
"Go back to Korea."
"Can’t you just stay in the U.S.?"
"I’ve got some things to take care of in Korea."
He looked oddly disappointed. I gave his shoulder a light pat.
"I’ll be coming here often anyway."
"Okay. Next time you come, let’s watch Zombienado together."
"...."
That’s a little much.
"Take care until I see you again."
"Got it. Safe travels."
I said goodbye to Sid.
As we finished packing and left the hotel, David asked,
"But do you really think you can raise $8 billion within six months?"
That was about 900 billion won, if I remembered correctly.
Just how many people in the world could come up with that much cash in six months? Even Chairman Yoo Jae-ho probably couldn’t do it.
"Couldn’t we take out a loan?"
He looked at me like I’d said something absurd.
"Do you think that would work?"
"Probably not."
There’s an M&A method called LBO.
It stands for leveraged buyout, and it’s a way of acquiring a company by borrowing money against the target’s assets as collateral.
In theory, that means you can buy a company without putting up a single cent of your own.
But Cooloud barely had anything that could be called an asset. Its operating profit was in the red, and its debt load was considerable. Besides, the acquisition of the remaining shares still hadn’t been completed.
It was hard enough for a shrimp to swallow a whale.
"We might be able to form a consortium by bringing in outside investment. If we’re buying Cooloud, plenty of firms will come running."
"But then we’d have to split the equity."
Again, I’ll say it: I intended to swallow the whole thing myself.
"You want to raise $8 billion on your own within six months? After paying the deposit, you’ll have only $68 million in capital left."
"Is it impossible?"
"Do you want my honest opinion?"
"Yes. Be honest."
David said firmly,
"It’s impossible."
That figures.
But then he added immediately,
"Still, if it’s you, Boss, I get the feeling it might be possible."
I burst out laughing.
"Hahaha!"
Looks like he was finally starting to trust me.
"Exactly. Money can always be made."
After boarding the plane, we reached John F. Kennedy Airport after a five-and-a-half-hour flight.
It had been a fairly long journey.
Come to think of it, even in my first life, I’d never wandered around a foreign country for this long.
We rolled our suitcases out of the airport.
I asked David,
"You’ve worked hard."
"It was nothing."
"Are you going home to rest now?"
He shook his head.
"No. I’m going straight to the hospital. My daughter’s waiting for me."
He looked like he wanted to see her a second sooner, a minute sooner, any sooner at all.
"Then may I come with you?"
"You mean that sincerely?"
"Yes. We’ll be working together from now on anyway, so I thought it would be nice to introduce myself while I have the chance. Would that be all right?"
He thought for a moment, then said,
"There’s no reason it shouldn’t be. But before we go to the hospital, there’s somewhere I need to stop by."
"Where?"
"O'Connor Pub. I was going to pick up the burger you mentioned before. My daughter likes hamburgers best."
"...."
You idiot.
A complete fool who only knows his daughter.
"But is it okay to bring outside food into a hospital?"
"Sometimes it is. Of course, you’d want to avoid anything too unhealthy."
I nodded.
"Follow me. I’ll show you the way."