On the West Coast of the United States, it was the evening of May 1 at Nexus AI headquarters.
It was a Saturday, but all middle and senior managers had been called back to the office for an emergency meeting.
No one complained. Working at one of Silicon Valley's leading AI startups meant accepting things like this-especially when its valuation kept climbing and everyone's stock options were rapidly gaining value.
In the conference room, Ryan Miller scrolled to the bottom of the projected document.
It was hosted on a subdomain of Source Code Technology's official website and contained documentation for the Tangyuan Protocol.
There were no new models, no new algorithms, and no formulas to excite the researchers. All it contained was a set of interface specifications.
"Tell me what you think." Ryan raised his head and looked at his colleagues around the conference room. "Source Code Technology has open-sourced an application integration specification. Why are we holding an emergency meeting on a Saturday night?"
Everyone stayed silent.
They had no idea why they had been called in, either.
Michael, the head of marketing, was the loudest in his silence.
Tracking competitors fell within his responsibilities, but he had scheduled a vitamin injection at the hospital during Source Code's launch event. He had only watched the beginning, confirmed that they were releasing a conversational app, and quickly decided the event posed no threat to Nexus AI.
Nexus AI had released its own chat app long ago, and its user count consistently ranked among the top three AI apps worldwide outside China. Michael had judged that Source Code's new product-Sweet Rice Ball Chat-would pose no threat.
Clearly, judging by the fact that everyone had been called into this meeting, he had been wrong.
But since Ryan had not called him out,