Chapter 203 Self-Isolation from the World

The night was deep, but the online meeting was in full swing.

Li Jianren wiped his face and made himself another cup of coffee. There was no way he could sleep tonight, since it was morning at headquarters.

The first time, he sat blankly in front of the computer, with no desire to speak.

On one hand, his phone kept ringing, with most of the calls coming in to ask him if he wanted to sell his Zenti stock.

Although Lee Kin-yan wanted to yell at them for kicking him when he was down, when faced with a phone call from his sister and brother, he ultimately said weakly, "Sell it, regardless of cost. Put up limit sell orders for all Zenti shares before the market opens."

He didn't dare say that just an hour earlier, right after Chen Jingyang's press conference ended, he had already sold all of his Zenti shares, as well as shares in other companies closely related to Zenti.

Although he was reluctant to admit it, he believed that he was not an isolated case!

There must be many people in the company who did the same thing as him.

Loyalty to Zenti was not enough to justify turning them into paupers overnight.

In fact, some people had already started selling Zenti's stock after Chen Jingyang's paper was published, and by yesterday's closing, Zenti's stock had fallen by 6%.

But Lee Kin Yan could almost foresee that today's drop would be unprecedented!

And this is just the beginning!

Chen Jingyang chose an excellent time for his press conference, just before the US stock market opened, and all his actions were carried out in one go, giving the outside world no time to react.

As Li Jianren predicted, after the news spread, Zenti's pre-market stock price plummeted from its historical high, with a drop of more than 10% within 5 minutes.

Within just half an hour, the circuit breaker mechanism for individual stocks in the US stock market was triggered.

During the trading halt, panic spread exponentially on social media, with topics such as "CUDA ecosystem will become history" and "the era of Zenti monopoly is over" quickly trending. At this point, pre-market trading volume had already exceeded 60% of the usual daily volume.

At the opening bell, without any buffer, Zenti's stock price plummeted by 20% compared to the previous trading day's closing price.

At the moment the market opened, over 50 million sell orders flooded in, instantly swallowing up the buying power at the top five bid levels, and the stock price plummeted like a kite with a broken string.

An hour later, the second round of individual stock circuit breakers was triggered, and in just 18 minutes, the stock price had fallen by 30%.

At this point, panic selling had spread to the entire AI industry chain, with the semiconductor index in a certain city plummeting by 8% simultaneously, and the stock prices of major Zenti clients such as a certain software company and a certain music company also experiencing varying degrees of decline.

Around noon, the stock price fell by 35%. Financial media reported in real time that Zenti's market value had evaporated by more than $1.6 trillion in a single day, equivalent to the GDP of a medium-sized developed country. This figure continues to break records for the largest single-day market value loss of a US stock.

At 2:47 PM, the third round of individual stock circuit breakers was triggered, and the stock price officially fell by more than 40%.

Some brokerages have begun to restrict high-frequency trading to prevent system crashes. Ordinary retail investors are frequently seeing "network connection timeout" messages on their trading interfaces. Those who want to sell cannot sell, and those who want to buy at the bottom dare not buy. The market has fallen into a strange state of "liquidity freeze".

By the close of trading at 4 p.m., Zenti's stock price had plummeted 40.8% from the previous trading day's closing price, setting a new record for the highest single-day trading volume for a US stock.

Lee Kin-yan couldn't help but sigh. This was another reason why he was unwilling to speak. He felt that the outcome was already decided, and no matter what they did, Zenti was powerless to reverse the situation.

"Lee!" Startled by being called out, Lee Kin-yan quickly replied, "Yes!"

"You are responsible for submitting the layoff list for the Greater China region!"

The CEO glanced at Li Jianren, then continued to tell the head of the public relations department: "The statement must be issued within two hours, the sooner the better. Start by questioning the scalability, security, ecosystem maturity, and long-term support capabilities of Chen Jingyang's company's technology, emphasizing that the decades of accumulation of the CUDA ecosystem are irreplaceable. Do everything possible to create doubts among investors and customers, buy some breathing room, and delay the market's shift!"

He then gave an order to the head of the legal department: "Immediately initiate lawsuits against Chen Jingyang's company and its partners worldwide on grounds of patent infringement, trade secrets, and unfair competition, and drag them into a legal quagmire!"

Then he instructed the R&D department: "As we just discussed, you need to quickly launch FPGA product lines or acquire FPGA companies, and immediately open up CUDA to a limited extent to make it an industry standard."

After saying this, he glanced around meaningfully, then suddenly sighed, "Human Resources, please stay. Everyone else, meeting adjourned."

Everyone logged off, but the elites who participated in the meeting today knew very well that the seemingly swift and decisive counterattack was nothing but a futile effort.

Chen Jingyang seemed to have anticipated Zenti's actions. Almost at the same time as issuing the statement of doubt, he launched an "open challenge": publicly inviting any organization to conduct comparative tests under notarization using its own models and datasets, and live-streaming the entire process—facts and data are the best proof.

Faced with patent infringement lawsuits, he publicly disclosed the core patent numbers that had been granted. In addition, he released an open-source license statement and a "contagious" license, requiring any closed-source commercial product based on it to be open source, so that no company would dare to "borrow" it easily.

Regarding the strategy for Zenti's technology transformation, he directly released a "migration toolkit": converting CUDA code hints to IC format with one click, greatly reducing the switching costs for developers.

He also launched the "IC Ready" certification program: collaborating with all hardware manufacturers to certify compliant devices. With this, Chen Jingyang's company has become the "dealer" of the new hardware world.

At this point, Zenti's market value has fallen by 70%, which some media outlets have described as: "This is not just a halving, but a complete collapse."

However, what Zenti found most unacceptable and even humiliating was that Chen Jingyang announced the establishment of the Implicit Computation Foundation, placing core patents and interfaces under the management of the open source foundation, and sent an invitation to Zenti!

This was undoubtedly a direct question to Zenti: A new king has been established. As the former king, will you kneel down and submit, or will you choose to end your life?