An Investor Who Sees The Future

We boarded a plane bound for the United States. Our destination was Silicon Valley.

If we didn’t have money, we would have chosen the cramped economy seats with layovers. But due to having some flexibility, we booked a direct first-class flight.

We sat in our seats and unpacked our belongings.

“How long until we arrive?”

“About 10 and a half hours.”

“I might as well get some sleep.”

Taekgyu changed into his pajamas, reclined his seat fully, and closed his eyes.

I sipped on the wine brought by the flight attendant, contemplating our future plans. I never imagined when I first started investing that I would come this far.

In a capitalist society, money equals power. As wealth increases, so does influence.

Even if a cat frolics freely, no one pays it any mind. But what if that cat grows as large as a tiger?

This is our current situation.

Our initial asset of around $10 million has grown to hundreds of billions, earning us global fame (or notoriety).

Even if one has no intention of dominating others, there’s a natural human tendency to want to leash and control those who become powerful.

Whether in politics or business, they will try to control us in some way.

So, should we willingly let them put a leash on us and crawl into our circle?

After the L6 incident, I reached out to Taekgyu, telling him to stick with it till the end. It wasn’t just empty words. If we’re going to stop now, we might as well not have started at all.

To avoid being led around with a leash around our necks, we need to make sound judgments from now on.

Our weapons are the cash in our accounts and the companies we hold stakes in. If our foresight is correct, they will grow into billion-dollar enterprises.

And as for allies who can provide assistance, there’s Golden Gate.

As the world’s largest investment bank, Golden Gate has deep roots in US politics and business, emerging unscathed from various conspiracies. They are an entity in Korea that cannot be treated lightly.

However, they are merely allies of necessity. While there is a link like Hyunjoo Noona, it remains uncertain whether they would help us at the cost of suffering losses if something were to happen.

A business alliance is not always a bad thing. Sometimes, a relationship forged through mutual benefit is more reliable than weak loyalty.

As long as it is mutually beneficial, it means not betraying each other.

While sorting out the complicated thoughts in my head, a massive continent revealed itself.

***

The airplane landed safely on the runway at San Francisco Airport. I woke up the sleeping Taekgyu.

“Get up.”

“Have we arrived already?”

“Yeah.”

The weather outside the window was sunny. It was afternoon when we departed, but it was morning upon arrival.

We changed our clothes and got off the plane. Europe has been suffering from terrorism and illegal immigration recently. Perhaps due to this atmosphere, immigration checks in the United States have also been strengthened.

After passing through immigration, picking up our luggage, and exiting the immigration hall, a man in a black suit was standing holding a placard with our names written on it.

He was a young man who appeared to be around the same age as me, tall and handsome.

I remembered a conversation with Chase Southwell a few days before departure.

“I heard you are going to the United States. If it’s okay, we would like to provide security and guidance on our end.”

I accepted without any reason to refuse.

The young man reached out his hand.

“Thank you for coming. I’m Henry. It’s an honor to escort you.”

“Nice to meet you, Kang Jinhoo.”

“I’m Taekgyu. Please take care of us.”

As we followed him out of the airport, the gentle California sunshine poured down. Just by looking at the weather, I could understand why everyone wanted to live here.

A limousine was waiting ahead, with two men who appeared to be bodyguards standing in front. One of them had an earpiece in his ear. On closer inspection, the bulge in his suit pocket looked like a gun.

Is it a gun?

It’s not unusual for bodyguards in the United States to carry guns since firearms are legal anyway.

We got in the back.

“Please take us to Palo Alto.”

***

Silicon Valley was a huge city.
We arrived at a building in Palo Alto. Here is where CarOS’ headquarters and research center are located.

Taekgyu was impressed by the company.
“Wow.”

Although we have cash in our accounts, we own companies like this.

Upon our arrival, the CEO, Daryl Sagan, came out to the entrance of the building. Just like when we first met, he was dressed casually in jeans, a t-shirt, and sneakers.

Daryl warmly welcomed us.
“Welcome.”

“It’s been a while.”

He is one of the few who knows that I am the CEO of OTK Company.

“You’ve been up to big things since we last met. I was surprised when I read the news.”

It was obviously about Brexit.

I laughed.
“I was lucky.”

“I’m really glad the company didn’t change owners.”

“We only invested money, we didn’t do anything.”

Daryl chuckled at my words.
“Thanks to not doing anything, the company was able to grow. Compared to the days when it was struggling due to unnecessary interventions, we are in the best environment now.”

In fact, it’s not easy to invest money and not interfere with management.

However, we didn’t touch any management-related issues. We believed that companies that were doing well would continue to do well, and those that were failing would fail anyway.

We toured the company with Daryl’s guidance. Perhaps because it started as a startup, the company culture was relaxed. Even when the CEO walked around, employees continued their work without paying much attention.

In the research lab, computers were constantly running. Various road scenarios were displayed on dozens of split screens.

“What’s that?”

“Autonomous driving. We’re using simulations to enhance learning capabilities.”

According to Daryl, they had already covered over 3 billion virtual miles, conducting experiments involving various accident scenarios to accumulate data.

Of course, in the reality of the road, many variables are at play, so actual road driving is still evolving in parallel.

We looked around inside and headed to the meeting room.
There, about 10 employees were already waiting. They could be considered as CarOS’ key personnel in management and development.

Among them, some familiar faces were seen. They were Ryan Gates and Sergi Yobanovich, whom we had met in Korea before.

Seeing them again felt welcoming.

Daryl introduced us to the employees.
“These are the people from OTK Company.”

The employees looked at us with surprised eyes. They probably didn’t expect such young Asian men to come to receive their subsidiary’s financial report.

As we sat down, CFO Sergi first presented the current management and financial situation. It was a rather long presentation, but the conclusion was simple.

Taekgyu said to me in Korean,
“Why did he talk so long about not earning a penny and running out of money?”

A company is one of two things.
Either it makes money or it eats money. Currently, CarOS is in the latter category.

Companies need funds endlessly for survival. Therefore, they either sell goods to make money or attract funds from outside. If the funding stops, the company comes to a halt.

We bought an 86% stake in CarOS for $88 million from Eunseongcha. We negotiated and put most of the $12 million discount back into development costs. But before a year had passed, we ran out of development funds. We had to take out some loans using the building and patents as collateral. Now even that money has run out.

At this point, you might understand why Eunseongcha let go and sold. Without any immediate results, the investment was still ongoing. There was no guarantee of future success. It must have been like pouring water into a bottomless pit.

Yet, the water in that pit began to slowly rise.
After Sergi’s presentation, COO Ryan continued. Over the past year and a half, CarOS has been dedicated to developing an operating system for autonomous driving, including artificial intelligence. Now, they are nearing completion.

Ryan confidently said,
“When I see completion at 100 percent, the current technology is at 95 percent.”

Taekgyu said,
“Isn’t that almost a completed project?”

As Daryl tilted his head and said, “God is in the details,” if this were just a simple software, some errors might be tolerable. However, errors in self-driving technology are directly linked to life and death.

The company that has been most aggressively incorporating autonomous driving technology into cars is the newly established electric vehicle company, Nikola. However, a few months ago, Nikola’s S model was involved in a major accident while in autonomous driving mode.

It was a collision with a white truck on the opposite side of the road. The reason why the vehicle did not stop upon encountering the obstacle was absurd. On that unusually clear day, the camera responsible for recognizing obstacles could not distinguish the white truck from the sky.

As a result, the car crashed into the truck without reducing its speed, and the driver died on the spot. This incident demonstrated how even a slight error in autonomous driving can lead to extremely fatal consequences.

Facing criticism, Nikola stated that the autopilot system is not autonomous driving, and drivers should always pay attention to the road ahead and be able to control the steering wheel and brakes at any time.

However, if that’s the case, why use autopilot at all? In autonomous driving, not even the slightest mistake is acceptable, and CarOS was heading in that direction.

Although not yet complete, it was evident that they were advancing towards the completion stage. With the current technology alone, they had already surpassed level 4 of autonomous driving and were approaching level 5.

Do you grasp the significance of this achievement? Since the inception of transportation, having a driver was common sense. This was the case when transitioning from horse carriages to automobiles. But now, we are entering an era where drivers are no longer necessary.

Cars parked in parking lots will come out when summoned, and they will automatically go to charging stations when low on fuel to recharge their batteries. Driving will become a hobby, not a daily necessity.

Sounds like something out of a science fiction movie, right? However, this is something that will actually happen, and that time is not too far away. Experts generally predict that within the next 10 years, autonomous driving will reach its completion stage, and driverless cars will be on the roads.

It is widely known that autonomous driving is the core technology of the future car industry. Therefore, car manufacturers and IT companies are all vigorously accelerating their technological developments.

Just half a year ago, CarOS couldn’t even join that group, and no one paid attention to him.

But now, the situation has changed.

There are two core technologies for future cars.

One is autonomous driving, and the other is electric cars. If the former is software, the latter can be called hardware.

We are securing software technology among the two.

So, which is more important between software and hardware?

Certainly, both are important. But if I had to choose one, I would choose software. Especially if it’s an operating system.

It’s possible to imitate hardware technology. Korea caught up with Japan that way, and China is catching up with Korea in a similar manner.

Can’t software be copied as well?

Of course, it can. In some ways, it can be imitated easier and faster than hardware. However, there is one major difference between the two.

When IBM was a major corporation, Microsoft was merely a subcontractor producing software. But when Microsoft’s OS was chosen over IBM’s PC OS, the situation reversed.

Subsequently, Windows dominated the PC OS market, not only in business computers but also in home computers.

A similar situation later occurred in smartphones.

Developers of the smartphone OS Andromeda approached Seosung Electronics for acquisition. However, Seosung Electronics, who was developing their own OS at that time, rejected the proposal, and Andromeda ended up under Google’s umbrella.

What happened next is almost self-explanatory. With Google’s support, Andromeda captured more than half of the global smartphone OS market.

Seosung Electronics, struggling in the smartphone market for a while, eventually gave up their own OS and released the L series with Google’s Andromeda installed.

Fortunately, thanks to relatively quick adjustments, they established themselves in the market and even attained the title of NPL’s rival.

However, lacking their own OS meant they had to keep following Google in the smartphone market. Seosung Electronics later introduced a smartphone with a new OS called Typhoon, but by then, the market was completely dominated by Andromeda and NOS.

The most crucial aspect of software is not how good it is but how many people use it.

Windows did not dominate the market because it was the best operating system, but because it seized the market.

What CarOS develops is not just autonomous artificial intelligence, but an operating system that can control the entire car.

As the technology reaches the final stage, automotive companies have begun to shift their stance as they realize how remarkable this is.

“Currently, Toyota Group, Daimler Group, and Eunsung Group have approached us for partnerships.”

“What are they asking for?”

With numerous precedents already set, they won’t be asking for anything that benefits others.

In response to my question, the spokesperson said,

“They are requesting a stake in CarOS.”

This is why we have come this far.