Top of the Great Era

Chapter 2993 Robbery

Business as usual.

Microsoft changed its CEO, and Satya Nadella became the third CEO of Microsoft after Bill Gates and Ballmer.

The market feedback was very negative.

The stock price fell.

As a veteran employee who has worked at Microsoft for more than 20 years, many people think that Nadella is a good guy who lacks personal charm and leaves little room for imagination in the capital market. The reason why he emerged as a dark horse this time is mainly because of the support from Bill Gates.

In order to get the board of directors to approve this decision, Bill Gates made a huge concession, allowing the board of directors to send a representative to serve as the chairman of Microsoft. He will withdraw from the core power layer of Microsoft and only provide support to the board of directors as a technical consultant.

It can be said that Bill Gates made great sacrifices to push Nadella to power.

From this day on, the company Microsoft is no longer named "Gates".

It became a truly public company.

Bill Gates doesn't seem to have much desire for power and wealth in Microsoft. He sells 8000 million shares of Microsoft stock every year. According to this selling rhythm, by 2017, all his Microsoft shares will be sold out.

At that time, all ties will be severed and only the honorary title will remain.

I still admire Zhou Buqi very much.

Or maybe he is a Silicon Valley giant who is as famous as Steve Jobs!

Most people can't achieve this level of awareness.

Originally, Microsoft's investors wanted to hire Ford's president to be Microsoft's CEO, and Nadella was only fourth on the candidate list. It was ridiculous to let the president of an outdated car company run Microsoft.

Bill Gates made great sacrifices in exchange for his concession to push Nadella to the top. It is hard to thank this Indian-American enough.

"This board of directors is really something that makes people love and fear it at the same time!"

Zhou Buqi was deeply touched.

The United States is an old capitalist society with a mature relationship between society, enterprises and capital, which is very different from China. For a listed company, the board of directors is the organizational structure that capital cares about most. A poorly structured board of directors can even lead to a decline in stock prices.

For example, Changyou.

On the seventh day of the Lunar New Year, Zhou Buqi went to New York again.

Changyou is going to reorganize its board of directors.

We need to bring in several foreigners as new directors.

Three have been identified so far, all of whom are well-known business elites, namely Dina Dablom, former chief financial officer of JPMorgan Chase, Raymond Gilmartin, former chairman of Merck Group, and Helmat Punk, former chairman of BMW.

They all hold about 2 shares of Changyou and are small shareholders.

However, there is one thing that makes Zhou Buqi different from Bill Gates.

Bill Gates’ shares in Microsoft are almost negligible and are almost sold out. Without shares, his control will naturally become less and less.

Zhou Buqi is different.

He personally holds nearly 1 million shares of Changyou. In addition, Ziweixing International holds 11.1 billion shares and Ziweixing holds 4.8 million shares. These are all persons acting in concert. Even Sohu, which holds 7.7 million shares, will follow him in voting, which is also equivalent to a person acting in concert.

This is his greatest confidence.

With such a foundation, at least Changyou will not be in chaos due to the meddling of other directors.

The Spring Festival is over.

Senior Sister Zhen Yu also has to return to work and go to New York.

Also on the plane was Sam Altman, who had completed all the onboarding procedures and officially became the vice president of Ziweixing International AI. He was going to New York to meet scientists in the artificial intelligence industry and then recruit him.

The reason why he stayed on Zhou Buqi's plane was because he wanted to ask him for help.

"He's a Chinese scientist." Sam Altman knew it was difficult to poach people, so he wanted to use his boss's reputation. "He used to be a professor at Stanford University and the director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Later, he was poached by Google and joined the autonomous driving project. He is very capable. Last year, he was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine, and one of the 16 people in the technology industry."

“Someone from Google?”

Zhou Buqi raised his eyebrows.

It is indeed very difficult to poach top scientists from Google. It is really difficult to do it without some special attraction.

Sam Altman nodded and said, "Well, he is now in New York with his family for the Spring Festival. We need to take advantage of the opportunity that he is away from Silicon Valley to contact him, and then recruit him here without anyone noticing."

"This is not okay."

Zhou Buqi's perspective was different from his. When Sam Altman wanted to recruit people, he only needed to find the people he needed, and he didn't need to care about so many things. Moreover, his past career was not very high, and he didn't seem to understand the practice of talent competition at the top level of Silicon Valley.

These are not just ordinary employees, but top scientists from Google, whom Google dug out from Stanford with great effort.

  Such a person was poached secretly?

Are you going to continue mixing with me in the future?

  Doesn't this make him the same as Elon Musk?

Larry Page was originally a good friend of Musk, and he even publicly announced that after his death he would not donate his money to charity but to Musk... But in order to lead Tesla to develop autonomous driving, Musk went directly to Google to poach several top scientists, which immediately angered Larry Page, and the two broke up.

In fair market competition, poaching is acceptable.

However, giants should be cautious.

It's like an atomic bomb.

You have an atomic bomb and I have an atomic bomb, so it’s best for everyone to be safe and no one uses the atomic bomb, otherwise no one will survive.

Silicon Valley giants are all very rich. If they really go to great lengths to poach core members from their competitors in order to compete, then everyone will just drop atomic bombs together and perish together. Musk is very crazy and he doesn't care about these things.

But Zhou Buqi couldn't do that.

Not to mention that he has a good relationship with Larry Page, even if the relationship is not good, you can't sneak up on other people's top scientists. If you really want to poach people, you can, but you have to tell Larry Page first, explain the interests involved, and have a basic communication to avoid causing too much damage to Google.

Zhou Buqi said: "I have to talk to Larry Page first."

Sam Altman smiled and said, "I don't think that's necessary. They should have already talked about it."

"Ok?"

Zhou Buqi didn't understand what he meant.

Sam Altman said: "He is leaving Google. This is the most concerned event in the artificial intelligence industry right now. All the powerful companies are watching him and want to poach him."

Zhou Buqi was surprised, "He's leaving Google?"

Sam Altman said: "Well, to be precise, it's job hopping."

If that's the case, then Zhou Buqi can be blunt. Scientists are "free" and anyone can compete for them. He asked, "Where is he going?"

Sam Altman said: "Baidu seems to want to invite him to head up its artificial intelligence business. He is Chinese, so he has a certain appeal."

"Oh!"

Zhou Buqi suddenly realized.

This is not surprising.

Baidu has fallen behind in the past two years, but its technical strength is still not to be underestimated. It is not as good as Google, but it is better than most technology companies, especially in the field of artificial intelligence, where it has always been in the first echelon in the world.

Most companies are not qualified to poach a top scientist from Google, but Baidu is qualified.

but……

Compared with Ziweixing, Baidu is far behind.

Senior Sister Zhen Yu was sitting next to Zhou Buqi, pondering, thinking about something. She couldn't help but say, "This person is the director of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Stanford University, and he jumped to Google... Is he Andrew? Andrew Wu?"

"Ah?" Sam Altman was a little surprised, "Jenny, do you know him?"

Zhen Yu chuckled and said, "I know. I have worked with him before."

"You?" Zhou Buqi couldn't believe it. He turned and stared at Senior Sister Zhen Yu. "Are you kidding? You've also switched to artificial intelligence?"

Zhen Yu rolled her eyes at him and said to him in Chinese: "Yesterday, you and Teacher Wen, I told you this!"

"Where did you say that?"

Zhou Buqi frowned slightly.

Zhen Yu said, "Didn't I tell you yesterday that I invested in an online education website in the United States?"

"Oh, I did say that, that... is called Coursera, right?"

Zhou Buqi remembered what Senior Sister Zhen Yu said last night.

Because he was paying attention to online education and sent Teacher Wen out, Senior Sister Zhen Yu naturally thought of the family fund he controlled that had also invested in an online education website, and that this website was very successful.

Zhen Yu nodded slightly, "Yes, it's Coursera, the website he helped to found."