Chapter 706: KuaiGo Goes Overseas, Firing the First Shot in North America! Meng Yuanzhi: I'll Give You Everything You Want

On October 28th, building on its Crystal Project, Thunder launched the Wanke Cloud NAS, which was essentially a private cloud drive.

But because it used shared computing and blockchain technology, along with the introduction of Wanke Coin, many people saw it as a mining tool.

The official price for a Wanke Cloud NAS was 399 yuan. On launch day, the entire stock of 100,000 units sold out in just ten minutes.

The initial price of Wanke Coin also soared from 0.01 yuan to 0.17 yuan!

In a single day, its value had multiplied more than tenfold!

“You missed out on Bitcoin. Are you going to miss out on Wanke Coin, too?”

Just from this slogan dreamed up by users online, the number of sign-ups on the Wanke Cloud NAS pre-order page quickly shot past one million.

Seeing this, scalpers worked through the night to hire programmers to write flash-sale software, hoping to get a piece of the pie.

Meanwhile, the “Group Buy Loan” platform founded by Wang Xin was growing ever larger, with total funds on the platform now exceeding 10 billion.

The concept of the sharing economy was heating up in the market, and this frenzy quickly spread to investment circles.

Overnight, all sorts of startups with a “sharing” label—like bike-sharing, car-sharing, and office-sharing—became the darlings of venture capital.

Investors rushed to make deals. From early seed funding to Series A and B rounds, funds flooded these sectors, as if the mere mention of “sharing” guaranteed immense market potential.

On every street corner, swarms of colorful shared bikes began to appear, quickly spreading from first-tier cities to second- and third-tier ones. Ofo bikes dominated the market, with DiDi Bike and Little Yellow Bike in the industry’s second tier. Xiaolan, U-bicycle, Coolqi, Xiaoqiang, Xiaolu, Shandian, Wukong, and others fought over the remaining market share.

With dozens of companies in a free-for-all, the competition became increasingly brutal.

Even Ofo suffered, forced to join the subsidy war. Previously, rides were free in first- and second-tier cities, but now the offer was nationwide.

Dozens of bike-sharing brands were all burning cash, and the losses made their investors’ temples throb.

Everyone was gritting their teeth and holding on!

On the evening of his first day back in Xucheng, Chen Yansen received a call from Hu Weiyi.

In short, she was preparing to start a Series B funding round while Ofo’s market share was at its peak, to stockpile “ammunition and supplies” for the coming bike-sharing war.

Chen Yansen agreed to her proposal without the slightest hesitation.

At the same time, car-sharing services began rolling out in major business districts and neighborhoods, attempting to change how people got around with a “pick up and drop off anywhere” model.

However, the stigma of them being “mobile toilets” still lingered in the minds of potential users, creating a stereotype that car-sharing was dirty, messy, and generally unpleasant.

Shortly after, Zhou Hongyi and Lei Yijun were at it again, trading insults online over the issue of pre-installed phone software.

Their feud had become a daily source of entertainment for people online. No one cared about what started it; everyone was just analyzing which of them, Zhou Hongyi or Lei Yijun, dished out the filthiest insults.

Chen Yansen sat in the back seat of the Gusteau, casually swiping through his screen. He quickly scanned the day’s top news.

What caught his attention was Taodian’s entry into the Hu City food delivery market. Centered around Hang City, Jinling, and Luzhou, it was making a full-scale push into the East China Region’s delivery market.

So, Ma Liyun finally wanted to lock horns with Senlian Capital in the O2O space!

‘Li Yanhong’s cooled down, and now Lao Ma is stepping up. As expected of the Asian Beast Arena. You can’t crown a champion until they’ve survived a hundred bloody battles.’

Chen Yansen thought with a cold smirk.

Under the relentless pressure from Lingxi, 360, Sogou, and Penguin Soso, the market share for Qian Du’s search business dipped below 40% for the first time.

Ever since Chen Yansen licensed the Moss large language model for use by 360 Search, Sogou Search, and Penguin Soso, Qian Du’s strategic front in the search engine war began to crumble.

A couple of days ago, Zhou Hongyi had sent him a message, teasing that Qian Du was also developing an AI language model in an attempt to stage a comeback.

‘But how could Qian Du possibly catch up to my two-plus years of technological development in such a short time?’

The Orange Technology Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, from building the algorithmic framework to amassing training data, had long since passed its most difficult, exploratory phase.

They had amassed billions of entries of high-quality, annotated data alone, the underlying model had undergone hundreds of iterations, and even the hardware accelerator cards used a custom architecture optimized by the team.

‘If they can cobble together a barely usable AI language model in six months, I’d have to say Qian Du’s tech team is pretty damn good.’

It wasn’t that Chen Yansen looked down on Li Yanhong; he had personally walked this path and knew all too well how many obstacles one had to face developing a language model in 2013.

Expecting that bunch of slackers at Qian Du to pull this off was completely unrealistic.

However, as DiDi Dache pulled back, Fast Taxi’s market share grew another 5%, reaching a staggering 85% in total, making it the undisputed hegemon of the ride-hailing industry.

DiDi Dache’s market share dropped to 8%, with the remaining 7% of the market carved up by AA Chuxing, Yidao Car Rental, E-Da Zhaoche, Dudu Jiaoche, and Dache Xiaomi.

In Chen Yansen’s eyes, while the war between Fast Taxi and DiDi Dache had burned through a lot of cash, it had also primed the market.

Challengers continued to pour in, one wave after another!

But Cheng Weixing wasn’t in the country at the moment. He had gone to New York to meet up with Huang Zheng, Zhou Shouzhi, Mao Chaorong, and others to establish Fast Taxi’s North American branch, and had posted a launch teaser on Mimo Short Video.

“KuaiGo! Global express rides, one tap away!”

KuaiGo was the brand name Fast Taxi had created specifically for overseas markets. The name played on the pinyin sound of “Kuai” (, fast) from the parent company’s name while also incorporating the dynamic English word “Go,” intuitively communicating its core selling point of convenient travel.

The team planned to use New York as a launchpad, simultaneously onboarding local taxi companies and private car drivers, and leveraging Mimo Short Video’s North American user base to fire the opening salvo with an ad campaign.

This international expansion was Chen Yansen’s plan. He refused to be a sitting duck. Rather than wait for Uber to bring the fight to them, he decided to take the battle to the Lighthouse Country, competing head-on with ride-hailing apps like Uber, Lyft, and SideCar.

In fact, the arrival of KuaiGo did put immense pressure on Uber, Lyft, and SideCar.

After all, the technological and financial might of KuaiGo’s parent company, Fast Taxi—not to mention Senlian Capital—in Hua Country was nothing to scoff at.

Cheng Weixing even ran promotional videos on the massive screens in New York Times Square.

New users could get a discount on their ride by using a special promo code; for instance, the “new rider 5” code offered an immediate five-US-Dollar discount.

For existing users, there was also a “new rider 3” code for a three-US-Dollar discount.

As for KuaiGo’s partner drivers, the company provided gas coupons for up to 10% off, which served as an additional subsidy.

On the marketing front, Cheng Weixing’s strategy was conservative. He clearly intended to test the waters first, and only after validating the business model would he make a large-scale push for the North American ride-hailing market.

Though he had extensive experience back home, the business environment, user demands, and driver profiles in the North American Region were markedly different.

For instance, strict local labor laws required drivers to have legal work authorization, which limited the pool of potential driver recruits from the outset.

Regarding user habits, North American consumers placed a higher value on privacy and were far more sensitive to apps collecting location data than their domestic counterparts. This forced the LBS-based precision dispatch feature to incorporate more detailed permission requests and security notices.

Furthermore, even payment methods needed to be reconfigured. Locals relied more heavily on credit cards than mobile payments, and the prevalent tipping culture required the fare system to include a flexible module for adding gratuities.

Cheng Weixing knew full well that the aggressive domestic playbook of “burning cash for market share” wouldn’t fly in North America.

First, local antitrust scrutiny was strict, and large-scale subsidies could easily be flagged as anti-competitive practices.

Second, users were less price-sensitive and cared more about service reliability and safety.

That’s why he opted for a “start small, move fast” approach: initially, they would pilot the service in just two cities, New York and San Francisco, with the number of drivers capped at one thousand. They would use this limited operation to gather user feedback and fine-tune their dispatch logic, customer support system, and dispute resolution process.

This “conservative” offensive was not a sign of timidity, but a necessary process of deconstructing their successful domestic experience and reassembling it to suit the foreign environment.

Cheng Weixing clearly remembered Chen Yansen’s advice from a video conference: “We have to learn to walk in North America before we can think about running. If we take too big a leap, we’re likely to stumble.”

That was why he was being so cautious.

「Meanwhile.」

As soon as Chen Yansen arrived at the company, he saw a familiar figure.

“President Liang, what are you doing here?”

Chen Yansen walked over, tapped on the small round table in the lounge area, and asked curiously.

At the sound of his voice, Liang Jingsong subconsciously looked up. Upon seeing it was Chen Yansen, his face broke into a broad smile as he said, “I’m here to see my nephew.”

With that, he gestured to the woman beside him and said, “This is Liang Yijun, my sister. She’s also the mother of Cai Qiming, the Director of Pinbei’s Design Department.”

‘Cai Qiming’s mom?’

Chen Yansen sized up Liang Yijun. She looked to be in her forties and had aged very well.

‘It finally dawned on him. Liang Jingsong hadn’t been invited by Hu Ruihui; he was here visiting family.’

Two days ago, Hu Ruihui hadn’t mentioned it, and Liang Jingsong hadn’t explained, leading Chen Yansen to mistakenly believe that Hu Ruihui had enough pull to get Liang Jingsong to come to Yanjing.

“Mom, Uncle! Boss!”

Cai Qiming, having received a text from Liang Jingsong, hurried to the first-floor lounge area.

To his surprise, Chen Yansen seemed to already know his uncle.

“Old Cai, you’re about to get a new colleague,” Chen Yansen said with a teasing smile.

Then, he said to Liang Jingsong, “Come up and have tea with me when you’re done.”

With that, he walked into the elevator bay.

“Uncle, you’ve met President Chen before?” Cai Qiming couldn’t help but ask. “And what did the boss mean when he said I’m getting a new colleague?”

In truth, Cai Qiming had already guessed but didn’t dare to be certain.

“I’ve accepted Mr. Chen’s invitation. I’ll be starting on November 1st as the co-CEO of Xingyuan Technology.”

Liang Jingsong explained with a faint smile.

…

…

With a DING, the elevator doors slowly opened.

Chen Yansen pushed open the door to his office. Although he hadn’t been back to the company for half a month, the office was still spotless.

He had barely sat down when his phone on the desk rang. He picked it up and saw the caller ID: Meng Yuanzhi’s private number.

He instantly knew why the man was calling and answered.

“A one-billion interest-free loan, plus a four-billion low-interest loan. Free industrial land. A seventy-percent tax break for the first five years. Residency permits, housing, supporting facilities and resources—whatever you want, I’ll give it to you.”

“As long as you keep Xingyuan Technology Headquarters in Luzhou!”

Meng Yuanzhi skipped the pleasantries entirely, getting straight to the policies and benefits.