Stronger by Paying Salaries and I Have 1 Billion Employees

Five days later, Chen Yansen received a work report from Liao Wei.

Cloud Speed had tentatively set the acquisition price for Zhongtong, with the share transfer agreement scheduled to be signed on June 15th.

Yunda Express was 760 million, and Zhongtong was 980 million, for a total of 1.74 billion.

Once Cloud Speed had absorbed Yunda and Zhongtong’s service networks, sorting centers, transit warehouses, and employees, they would gain at least 40,000 more staff, generating over 30,000 strands of Human Dao Fire each month.

The remaining companies, Shentong and Yuantong, were still holding on for dear life, but Chen Yansen knew they wouldn’t last much longer.

The more prominent Cloud Speed’s economies of scale became, the lower their cost-per-parcel. For Shentong and Yuantong, it was the opposite; as their business volume decreased, their cost-per-parcel kept rising.

Six months ago, for small e-commerce packages under one kilogram, Cloud Speed’s cost—including shipping, delivery, and equipment depreciation—was under 1.5 yuan per parcel. Now, it had dropped to 1.2 yuan.

Meanwhile, Shentong and Yuantong’s cost had risen from 1.5 yuan to 2.2 yuan per parcel.

With one side growing stronger as the other weakened, it was only a matter of time before Shentong and Yuantong went under.

Using a price war to eliminate competitors had always been the ultimate move in business warfare.

It was expensive, but the results were undeniable.

Liao Wei was doing a fine job as CEO of Cloud Speed Express, and Chen Yansen had no intention of replacing him. He simply had Gao Weilin assign a team of finance and legal personnel skilled in mergers and acquisitions to assist Liao Wei with the takeovers.

Devouring two courier companies in a row, although not yet reported in the news, had already sent shockwaves through the industry.

The names Liao Wei and Chen Yansen instantly became buzzwords within the industry.

The bosses of other courier companies hated their guts, but the delivery drivers below them dreamed of the day their own companies would be acquired by Cloud Speed. Then they could live the good life with a base salary of 3,000 yuan, full social insurance and housing fund contributions, high commissions and benefits, and a monthly income of seven to eight thousand.

It wasn’t that they hadn’t thought of switching jobs, but Cloud Speed Express’s package volume spoke for itself. Nearby service centers only hired 20 to 30 people at a time. With so many applicants and so few openings, positions were naturally hard to come by.

Before getting off work, Chen Yansen received the appearance and hardware design schematics for the Moss (Alexa) Smart Speaker from Lin Qingbai. After looking them over, he replied with a simple ”OK.”

This was already Lin Qingbai’s third version of the design, and it met all of Chen Yansen’s requirements.

It had a cylindrical design, 12 cm in diameter and 18 cm in height—a moderate size, making it both portable and suitable for home placement.

The casing was made of ABS plastic with a metal mesh grille. The top featured physical buttons like a power switch, a mute button, and a volume knob, and it was encircled by an LED light ring.

Blue indicated standby mode, green meant it was responding, and red signified a failed connection, using colors to provide real-time status feedback.

The main control chip was a TI OMAP 3630, which ensured performance while effectively reducing power consumption. It was paired with an ADAU1761 DSP audio decoder that supported stereo recording and playback, boasting ultra-high sampling precision and audio processing capabilities.

At the core of the voice module were six omnidirectional MEMS microphones arranged in a ring, supporting wake-up functionality from up to five meters away.

In offline mode, the embedded speech analysis and interaction engine had 20 basic commands built-in. Users could connect to the cloud server via Wi-Fi to experience the full-powered version of the Moss (Alexa) Smart Speaker.

The bill of materials cost was 310 yuan, meaning the price had to be at least 599, 699, or even 799 or 899 yuan to have any profit margin.

It couldn’t be helped; hardware costs were just that high in 2012.

Chen Yansen thought for a moment, then sent a message to Wang Teng, telling him to get Zhou Chuangxi, Ye Qiuping, and the head of Orange Mall, Yan Peng, to come upstairs for a meeting.

Three minutes later, a KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK came from the door.

”Come in!” Chen Yansen responded.

As soon as the four of them entered, their eyes were drawn to the Moss (Alexa) Smart Speaker on the screen.

The cylindrical body, the matte plastic top panel with its embedded LED light ring, the metal mesh grille encasing the speaker—the design seemed simple, yet it exuded a sense of technology that was ahead of its time.

They knew this was the first consumer product for the Moss Intelligent Voice Assistant.

”President Chen, is this the final version?” Zhou Chuangxi was the first to ask.

”Let’s go with this version. If we keep messing with it, I’m afraid Lin Qingbai will throw in the towel and run for it,” Chen Yansen joked with a smile.

”President Chen, what’s the price?” Wang Teng asked with concern.

Too low, and there’s no profit; too high, and it won’t sell.

Frankly, he didn’t have much confidence in this product. The Moss (Alexa) Smart Speaker’s material cost was only a few dozen yuan cheaper than the Orange D1, so a price of 699 yuan seemed most reasonable.

’But back in 2012, how many people would be willing to buy a 699 yuan speaker?’

’Wouldn’t it be better to add another 100 yuan and just buy an Orange D1?’

”799 yuan domestically, and 199 US Dollars in overseas markets. Oh, and get in touch with Paramount. If they’re willing to share their merchandise sales channels with Orange Technology, we can give them a 5% to 10% commission per unit. The lower the better. I’m putting you in charge of it.”

Chen Yansen said, turning his head to look at Ye Qiuping.

”Okay, President Chen,” Ye Qiuping quickly replied.

”Regarding the software ecosystem, we’ve currently integrated Douban FM, Xiami Music, QQ Music, Toutiao, Penguin News, Sohu News, and the weather forecast from the meteorological bureau for the domestic market. The overseas market is still a blank slate. I’ve asked Zhou Shouzhi from DST to make an introduction for you; go find him directly tomorrow.”

Chen Yansen then instructed Wang Teng.

He tasked him with connecting with companies like Amazon Music, Pandora, SiriusXM, and Wolfram Alpha to enrich the service offerings of the Moss (Alexa) Smart Speaker.

Therefore, the Moss (Alexa) Smart Speaker was destined to launch domestically first, before going on sale in overseas markets.

”I understand, President Chen,” Wang Teng agreed with a nod.

”Orange Mall can put up a teaser announcement. On June 18th, it will be released simultaneously across all platforms,” Chen Yansen continued.

”Yes, President Chen. I’ll arrange to get it online as soon as possible,” Yan Peng replied.

”President Chen, what about me?” Zhou Chuangxi asked, looking around and realizing he was the only one without an assignment.

”Increase the training volume. I want Moss to become even more intelligent. Surpassing Siri is just the starting point; I’ve never considered Siri a rival. Don’t let that server cluster, capable of fifteen quadrillion floating-point operations per second, go to waste.”

Chen Yansen said slowly.

The implication was that his expectations for Moss went far beyond simply surpassing Siri.

Otherwise, there would have been no need to pour money into servers to boost computing power and coax over a hundred artificial intelligence experts from the Lighthouse Country, all just to create a rudimentary voice interaction engine.

”No problem,” Zhou Chuangxi agreed readily.

After the short meeting, Chen Yansen waved his hand, and the four of them took the hint and promptly got up to leave.

Chen Yansen, however, wasn’t in a hurry to leave. Instead, he selected a few high-definition CG renders and posted them on Weibo.

The caption read: ”The world’s first smart speaker. Instant voice interaction. An artificial intelligence that can talk to you.”

Chen Yansen now had 30 million followers on Weibo. Within just a few minutes, tens of thousands of people had liked and reposted it, and the comment section began to liven up.

”A smart speaker? What the hell is that?”

”Artificial intelligence? For real?”

”President Chen, when is it launching? I won’t pay, can you send me one for free?”

”Holy shit! I wake up and what the hell is going on? Did I time travel? They’re already making products with artificial intelligence!”

Although the Turing test had been proposed seventy years prior, in 2012, the concept of artificial intelligence was not yet mainstream.

It would be another two years before Amazon launched the world’s first smart speaker, the Echo, and three years before OpenAI was founded.

Therefore, many people were skeptical about Orange Technology’s smart speaker.

After all, in the eyes of netizens, Orange Technology’s R&D capabilities were nowhere near the top level required to conduct research in artificial intelligence.

”An AI speaker? Did Orange Technology really pull it off?” After receiving the news, Lei Yijun hurriedly pulled out his phone, opened Chen Yansen’s Weibo profile, and repeatedly studied every detail of the Moss Smart Speaker.

He understood Chen Yansen’s style; since the man had even released a product teaser, it meant that this smart speaker already had some degree of commercial value.

What infuriated him, however, was that besides a few photos, Chen Yansen wouldn’t even reveal the product’s name.

At Ke Da Xunfei’s headquarters in Luzhou, Liu Fengqing couldn’t help but fall into deep thought. He also found it hard to believe that Orange Technology had created an intelligent voice interaction engine in less than half a year.

He knew that Ke Da Xunfei had been deeply immersed in intelligent voice technology for over a decade, and the upper limit of their current capabilities was merely converting text to speech and voice signals into text.

As for voice interaction technology?

Ke Da Xunfei was still in the exploratory phase, and the features they had developed were all very rudimentary.

For a time, netizens all over the country were speculating about Orange Technology’s smart speaker, wondering whether its built-in voice interaction engine was stronger or weaker than Siri.

The next morning, the official Orange Mall account released the teaser link for the Moss Smart Speaker. It would go on sale at 10 a.m. on June 18th for 799 yuan.

This immediately deterred seventy to eighty percent of interested users.

Only the bloggers in the tech and gadget circles were rubbing their hands in glee, planning to snag one on release day. The product itself wasn’t important; what mattered was riding the wave of traffic first.

Apple’s CEO, Cook, soon heard about Orange Technology’s new product. He gave a contemptuous smile and paid it no mind.

In his eyes, Orange Technology was just a mobile phone assembly plant with no real technical substance. This smart speaker was most likely just a gimmick. Its interaction performance, wake-up success rate, and conversational accuracy would be lucky to reach a third of Siri’s.

After a few days, the hype around the Moss Smart Speaker slowly died down. With the approach of the 618 e-commerce mega-sale, it was soon forgotten by netizens.

After upgrading and revamping Tmall Mall, Ah Li launched a ”Catch the Cat” event for the first time. If you waited on the 618 mega-sale page at 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. sharp, black cats would pop up.

The gameplay was similar to Whac-A-Mole; clicking on a cat with the mouse would earn you cash packets of 50, 100, or 200 yuan. Of course, 90% of the prizes were just brand coupons from the event’s sponsors.

Jingdong released ”150 off 199” Jing-coupons, also available in limited quantities at 10 a.m. and 8 p.m. daily, competing with Ah Li for sale traffic.

Platforms like Sunning, Gome, Amazon, and Yixun Network launched their own events, such as 1-yuan flash sales and 9.9-yuan special deals, with products including gold bracelets, cars, and Apple phones.

Under Huang Zheng’s direction, Pinbei had long prepared a variety of marketing campaigns: 5,000-yuan coupon packs, group buying events for three, five, a thousand, or even ten thousand people, limited-time flash sales, free orders, ”slash the price to get it free” deals, and ”50% off a minimum spend” god-tier coupons.

The scale and intensity of their promotions were in no way inferior to Taobao’s or Jingdong’s.

Meanwhile.

「Yanjing, Fast Taxi Branch Office」

Zhang Yunni from the product department was testing the upcoming ”Fast Taxi Red Packets” feature. Having worked overtime for several days straight, her mind went blank for a moment, and she deployed the new feature to the live production environment.

Ten minutes later, a risk control alarm was suddenly triggered. Only then did Zhang Yunni realize what she had done. Her face fell as she muttered, ”I’m so screwed!”