Chen Cheng thought for a moment, then lifted his hand to check his watch. 'Arrange a local restaurant; I'm having a meal with the leadership tonight. Keep it under 100 per person. We can have some local liquor, but make sure the drinks are included in the per-person budget.'

'Just arrange it first; whether the leadership actually eats or not is another matter.'

'Alright.' Chen Cheng's response was within expectations, and Li Na was not overly surprised.

'I'll have my secretary arrange it immediately.'

'There's one more thing I'd like to discuss with you.'

Chen Cheng smiled and took her hand. 'If there's something on your mind, just say it directly. Being all mysterious doesn't really suit you.'

Zhao Yazu glanced at the rearview mirror and secretly scoffed at Chen Cheng, 'This playboy is really shameless.'

'Hmm...' Li Na pondered for two seconds before speaking slowly. 'I believe we should consider developing our own chips.'

'Using Yinda's cards has certain advantages in the short term.'

'But in the long run, the cost of upgrading is simply too high.'

'For our first phase here, we have to invest nearly 15 billion just to buy GPUs. Whenever Yinda updates in the future, we will inevitably have to upgrade to maintain our computing power advantage, and we might even need to expand the scale of our data center.'

'Based on your previous vision, I've made a simple projection.'

'If demand explodes in the future and GPU prices rise, to maintain our advantage, our capital expenditure over the next five years could reach the hundred-billion level.'

'In USD.'

'Not to mention whether we have that much money.'

'Or whether future revenue will be able to cover the expenses.'

'Most importantly, relying on a single supplier will leave us at the mercy of others.'

'And there are no viable alternatives on the market.'

'I've thought about it carefully, and I still feel we should develop our own specialized chips based on our own models.'

'If the tape-out is successful in the future and reaches a top-tier level, then all the initial investment will have been worth it.'

'I've also studied the technological progress in the semiconductor field domestically over these years.'

'I feel that we have gradually passed the exploration phase of advanced manufacturing processes.'

'Entering the market now is the best time.'

How could Chen Cheng, a man with foresight, not have thought about these things?

But he was somewhat reluctant to get involved in this bottomless pit.

'Sigh~' Chen Cheng sighed.

This matter is a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't' situation.

No matter how he looked at it, as long as he wanted to keep running ZEN.

Then developing his own chips seemed to be a path he had to take.

The semiconductor fund with a scale of nearly 15 billion that he had Yu Tu establish was actually in preparation for future embargoes.

Arguably, this scale was already aggressive enough for an industry fund.

Let alone the fact that this was a private equity fund.

But Li Na's attitude today seemed to be reminding him that he hadn't done enough...

That he wasn't firm enough...

Or rather... that he wasn't aggressive enough.

Li Na, the conservative, was accusing Chen Cheng, the radical, of being too conservative.

But chip development, how could it be that easy?

Alibaba's T-Head was established two years ago, and it would still take five years before there was any news.

And they didn't start from scratch; they acquired C-Sky Microsystems and integrated their own DAMO Academy chip team.

Asking him to develop chips.

You think you can just do it because you want to?

Chen Cheng thought for a moment, and finally condensed it into one sentence: 'I don't have the money.'

The money he had at his disposal, which was that large sum in Zhencheng Hong Kong, was already earmarked for other purposes or was already in use.

He couldn't just change his layout in the capital markets because of a sudden idea.

That wouldn't be smart, nor would it be rational.

The main thing was that he wasn't stupid; he was very clear that with his foresight and his ability to turn lead into gold (short-term cheats), the capital market was his foundation.

As for ZEN, it was purely a system reward that dragged him into playing around with it.

Li Na's eyes immediately lit up with excitement.

Since Chen Cheng said that, it meant he actually agreed with self-development in his heart.

She reminded him, 'Since our inception, we haven't had a single debt with a maturity of over a year.'

'Although there were two rounds of financing, they were both you moving money from your left hand to your right. Boundary Exploration hasn't had a single round of external financing yet.'

(A reminder, in case everyone forgot: Boundary Exploration is the Chinese Company Name for ZEN AI.)

Chen Cheng looked at her full of anticipation, pursed his lips, and asked, 'How much do you want?'

Li Na almost blurted out, 'One billion within a year, eight billion within three years, thirty billion within five years.'

'In USD!'

Chen Cheng's mouth twitched; she had clearly prepared this in advance, even doing the budget.

Thirty billion, and in USD no less.

'Let's try it,' Li Na tugged on Chen Cheng's arm, looking at him with big, watery eyes, her tone exceptionally soft and sweet.

'We still have plenty of empty industrial land next to us.'

The implication of this was obvious: Li Na wanted to build a hardware R&D center next to the data center in the ZEN port area.

Chen Cheng looked at this top-tier queen acting like a cute girl and flirting with him just to develop self-made chips; his mouth was almost twitching numbly.

It seems that this position as Vice President of ZEN had infinitely stimulated Li Na's ambition, or rather, her career drive.

For a moment, Chen Cheng actually didn't know whether to be happy or sad.

Clearly, for Li Na, the attraction of her career was far greater than him as a man.

Chen Cheng let out a breath and thought about it seriously.

Thirty billion dollars, around two hundred billion RMB, he could actually handle that.

Besides, there's always financing, right?

If it loses money, it won't entirely be his own money.

It's just that he didn't know if throwing thirty billion dollars into this would make any noise at all.

'How about this~ After we go back, I'll talk to Su Jianren. Zhencheng Holdings will provide a guarantee, and we'll get a 5 billion credit line for ZEN first.'

'Yes!' Li Na immediately clenched her fists in excitement and kissed Chen Cheng.

'Mwah, husband is the best.'

Zhao Yazu was truly numb; no wonder this playboy hadn't crashed and burned with so many women.

Throwing money around like this, who could resist?

The two of them engaged in a battle of lips and tongues for a minute or two before they finally separated.

Li Na was already blushing; this bad guy, kissing was fine, but he had to use his hands too.

Li Na sat back in her seat and turned her head to look out the window.

Autumn had come to the North of the Great Wall, and the wind no longer had the sweltering heat of the past.

'The pace of ZEN's financing won't change.'

'Counting this credit line, plus the funds on the books and the returns from wealth management, you need to use this money for financing.'

'You need to have a clear idea of how to spend it.'

A few months ago, Chen Cheng had transferred 5.7 billion USD to ZEN through financing from Hong Kong. 120 million was used to upgrade the previous generation of GPUs that had just been in use for a short time, which was done to save time. 380 million USD was used to build wind and solar power farms, though this money hadn't been fully spent yet. One billion USD was the deposit for the GPUs at the North of the Great Wall data center, which had already been paid.

The remaining 4.2 billion USD was returned to Zhencheng Hong Kong for short-term wealth management.

Here, one has to mention the incident of a certain listed company using financing to buy wealth management products.

Using idle funds obtained from financing for short-term wealth management is actually a very normal operation; you just need to reflect it in the annual report.

This company, not knowing if they were stupid or doing it on purpose, issued a direct announcement.

The company's stock price had already been fluctuating significantly recently, and once this announcement came out, it immediately stirred up a thousand waves, with countless people criticizing it.

The overheated stock price immediately plummeted in response.

Hmm... it's hard to say it wasn't a method of market capitalization management.

Li Na nodded. 'Hmm~ I'll have the financial center issue a new budget table.'