Chapter 2993: Stealing People

Everything is 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 an old employee who has worked at Microsoft for more than 20 years, many people think that Nadella is a good guy, lacks enough personal charm, and does not leave much room for imagination in the capital market. The reason why he can come out as a dark horse this time is mainly because of the support from Bill Gates.

In order to make the directors of the capital side recognize such a decision, Bill Gates also made great concessions and allowed the capital side to send a generation of representatives to serve as the chairman of Microsoft. He will withdraw from the core power layer of Microsoft and only provide support in the board of directors as a technical consultant.

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

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

It has become a real public company.

Bill Gates does not seem to have much power and wealth pursuit for Microsoft. He sells 80 million shares of Microsoft stock every year. At this pace, by 2017, all of his Microsoft shares will have been sold out.

By that time, he will have really cut off his relationship with the company, leaving only the honorary title.

Zhou Buqi still admires him.

Or maybe he is a Silicon Valley giant on par with Steve Jobs!

This awareness is something that most people cannot achieve.

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 It is ridiculous to let the president of an outdated car company run Microsoft.

Bill Gates made great sacrifices in exchange for his concessions to push Nadella to the top. This Indian-American cannot thank him enough.

"This board of directors is really both loved and feared!"

Zhou Buqi was very touched.

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

Take Changyou for example.

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.

It is going to introduce several foreigners as new directors.

Three have been confirmed, all of whom are well-known business elites, namely Dina Dablom, former CFO of JPMorgan Chase, Raymond Gilmartin, former chairman of Merck Group, and Helmat Punk, former chairman of BMW.

They all hold about 20,000 shares of Changyou and are all small shareholders.

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

Bill Gates's shares in Microsoft are very small and are almost sold out. Without shares, the control will naturally become lower and lower.

Zhou Buqi is different.

He personally holds nearly 100 million shares of Changyou. In addition, Ziweixing International holds 1.11 billion shares and Ziweixing holds 480 million shares. These are all persons acting in concert. Even Sohu's 770 million shares will follow him in voting, which is equivalent to persons acting in concert.

This is his greatest confidence.

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

The Spring Festival is over.

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

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

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

"This is a Chinese scientist." Sam Altman knew that it was difficult to poach people, and wanted to use the face of the big boss Zhou. "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 powerful. 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."

"Google people?"

Zhou Buqi raised his eyebrows.

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

Sam Altman nodded and said, "Well, he is spending the Spring Festival in New York with his family. We need to take advantage of his absence from Silicon Valley to contact him and recruit him without anyone noticing."

"That won't work."

Zhou Buqi has a different perspective from him.

If Sam Altman wants to poach people, he only needs to find the people he needs, and he doesn't need to care so much. Moreover, his past level was not too high, and he didn't seem to know much about the practice of talent competition at the top level of Silicon Valley.

This is not an ordinary employee, this is Google's top scientist, Google took a lot of effort to dig out from Stanford.

Such a person was poached secretly?

Will he still be able to get by in the future!

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

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

In a fair market competition, poaching is allowed.

However, giants should be cautious.

It's just like an atomic bomb.

You have an atomic bomb, I have an atomic bomb, then it's best for everyone to be safe and no one should use an atomic bomb, otherwise no one will live.

Silicon Valley giants are very rich. If they really do everything they can to poach core members from their competitors for competition, then everyone will throw atomic bombs together and perish together. Musk is very crazy, he doesn't care about these things.

But Zhou Buqi can't do this.

Not to mention that he has a good relationship with Larry Page, even if the relationship is not good, he can't sneakily attack other people's top scientists. If you really want to poach someone, 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: "It shouldn't be necessary, they should have already talked."

"Huh?"

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 now. The powerful big companies are watching and want to poach people."

Zhou Buqi was surprised, "He is leaving Google?"

Sam Altman said: "Well, to be precise, he is changing jobs."

If this is the case, then Zhou Buqi can be blunt. Scientists are "free identities", of course anyone can compete and poach, and asked: "Where is he going?"

Sam Altman said: "Baidu seems to want to invite him to run the 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, and it has always been in the first echelon of the world.

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

However...

Compared with Ziweixing, Baidu is far behind.

Senior Sister Zhen Yu was sitting next to Zhou Buqi, pondering, thinking, and 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: "Yes, I have worked with him."

"You?" Zhou Buqi was a little unbelievable, turned his head and stared at Senior Sister Zhen Yu, "Are you kidding? You 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!"

"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, that... is it called Coursera?"

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, which also participated in the investment of an online education website, and this website was very successful.

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