Reborn in 2010, the AI ​​in my mind is too powerful.

Although the strategy of supporting Wei Zhe's family had been decided, Chen Yiran did not seek to communicate with them. In his view, there was no point in contacting them now. After the board's decision was made, those who obeyed would stay, and those who did not would be kicked out.

Anyway, he didn't think these people were the most important to him when it came to finding the experts he was going to look for later.

Two days later, TSMC held its first board meeting at its Hsinchu headquarters after Morris Chang's formal retirement.

According to TSMC's regulations, board meetings can only be convened by the chairman. Therefore, Chen Yiran, still acting as a shareholder, contacted the major and minor shareholders who supported him and put pressure on the current chairman, Zeng Fancheng.

Tseng Fan-cheng is not a leader-level figure. He has been a member of TSMC's board of directors since 1997 and has long served as the chairman of the TSMC Education Foundation.

He has always been in charge of various public welfare undertakings, such as youth cultivation, educational cooperation and arts and culture promotion, and often organizes science competitions, art education activities and arts festivals.

Although it can be said that he participated in all of TSMC's major decisions over the past two decades, none of these major decisions originated from him.

So after the major shareholder put pressure on him, he did not hesitate much and immediately convened a board meeting.

TSMC's board of directors is also quite interesting, with most of them being independent directors, and members covering industry, academia, and the legal profession.

Following procedure, Zeng Fancheng first confirmed the identities of the directors present. His first was himself, the newly appointed chairman.

Then there's Li Zhongxi, the representative of the National Development Fund and the largest institutional shareholder, who can be considered an official shareholder.

Chen Yiran is a director who holds shares.

These three people are the only shareholders on the board of directors.

The remaining five independent directors had no connection with TSMC. They all understood the situation and basically ignored Zeng Fancheng, focusing instead on Chen Yiran, wanting to see what issues he would raise today.

Chen Yiran also looked around, secretly calculating whether these people would pose any obstacles to him.

Stan Shih, founder of Acer and godfather of Taiwanese technology, is known as a Chinese entrepreneur who challenges the world. He is essentially neutral with a bias towards local supporters, and his stance is unclear.

Peter Bonfield, the former CEO of BT, is a relatively pragmatic and friendly person. As long as Chen Yiran sends him enough orders, he is unlikely to have any objections.

Thomas Jengibbs, former chairman of Texas Instruments, basically shares a similar stance with Peter Bonfield and has some personal friendship with Wei Zhejia.

Gregory Chow, a Princeton economist, whose political stance is unclear.

Chen Guoci, a renowned lawyer, has an ambiguous political stance.

Zeng Fancheng signed the document and then said, "Alright, Chairman Zhang Zhongmou and Director Cai Lixing have resigned, and the eight directors who are still in office are all here."

Although I initiated this board meeting, it was at the request of the shareholders. Therefore, Mr. Chen, could you please elaborate on your proposal as a shareholder?

Chen Yiran waved his hand, and Nuno behind him distributed several documents.

"Take a look at these. This is the technology alignment invitation that Aurora Group sent to TSMC after the previous shareholders' meeting. As we all know, there were some reasons before."

TSMC and Aurora's relationship isn't great; TSMC hasn't received the latest FlowEDA update. Now, to secure future orders for TSMC, we need to align our existing technologies.

After all, countless future orders will need to be handled by TSMC. However, things are quite chaotic at TSMC lately. Although they sent people to liaise with Aurora Group, they were told that due to a shortage of manpower, they would have to wait in an internal queue.

However, as far as I know, TSMC still maintains a significant workforce for the PDK certification of Google's Maze EDA. It's worth noting that Maze EDA is a relatively new EDA product with a market share practically zero.

Frankly speaking, apart from Nvidia and Motorola (a subsidiary of Google), no other large company on the market would choose this EDA tool. I believe that wasting huge amounts of manpower on this project is a disregard for shareholder interests.

Therefore, I hereby demand the removal of Liu Deyin, one of the current CEOs, from all his positions.

The others didn't expect Chen Yiran to be so straightforward. Li Zhongxi immediately objected: "You are a member of Aurora, so of course you want TSMC to be tied to Aurora's chariot."

However, this will exacerbate TSMC's dependence on Aurora, as Aurora Group itself owns its own wafer fabs in China and also holds shares in Samsung.

I have reason to suspect that, Mr. Chen, your intention is to make TSMC completely dependent on Aurora Group, and then undermine TSMC's foundation, plunging it into a predicament.

If things don't go smoothly at TSMC, Chen Yiran isn't entirely without this idea, but he certainly won't admit it. However, he also ignored Lee Jong-hee, who was destined to oppose him.

He turned his attention to the other shareholders: "I am also a shareholder of TSMC, so this is completely unnecessary for me. Moreover, I only obtained my seat on the TSMC board of directors with the help of many allies."

Although many people say I'm immature and hold grudges, anyone who goes online will know that I'm always very generous to my employees, allies, and friends.

"If TSMC gets into trouble and its market value declines, it will affect my friends, and I won't do that."

Peter Bonfield pondered for a moment and said, "Mr. Chen, the core issue is that if we do this, TSMC will become too dependent on Aurora Group in the future."

Chen Yiran feigned ignorance and asked, "I don't quite understand. Isn't Samsung heavily reliant on Aurora Group now? Isn't GlobalFoundries heavily reliant on Aurora now? Why are you worried?"

While Samsung and Aurora Group could be said to have cross-shareholdings, forming a closer community of interests, GlobalFoundries and Aurora Group have absolutely no shareholding ties.

I believe your thinking is still bound by Morris Chang's blueprint. He has been opposing me, simply because he believes TSMC still has a technological advantage, even though TSMC is now lagging behind Samsung and even GlobalFoundries in process technology.

He still doesn't believe that TSMC needs to reveal all its cards to others. I initially asked him for the original wafer measurement data from TSMC's OPC model calibration, the window boundaries for each design rule, and the TCAD calibration parameters for process device simulation.

He has always disagreed, and even now TSMC has not completely handed over all of this to Aurora Group, and what we are given is still the revised figures.

You say I'm targeting TSMC? Honestly, our EDA software is different. It uses AI deep learning, you know? It requires raw wafer measurement data to optimize. It needs to know which areas still have margin and which have already reached their limits.

How can we conduct collaborative optimization of process design if they don't give us anything? The previous short-term cooperation was already out of consideration for the yellow-clad guy!

Let me be honest, TSMC's technology is outdated! Without relying on Aurora Group's EDA technology, you'll be left behind by the times! You have no choice but to rely on Aurora, or you'll go completely under and be abandoned by the times.

Zeng Fancheng, who had initially intended to remain indifferent, was somewhat provoked by these words. He didn't actually care about Liu Deyin's future. However, as a veteran of TSMC, he felt that Chen Yiran's words were rather insulting.

He said tremblingly, "Mr. Chen, you just said that you are a shareholder of TSMC and that you care about TSMC's interests. Isn't it a bit much to be so sarcastic about our technology now?"

Chen Yiran didn't give him any face, coldly saying, "Because you don't understand technology. Anyone who understands technology knows I'm right. Why do you think I'm sitting at this table? To put it simply, it's because my technology is good enough."

No one can replace my technology! Google's idiotic framework simply cannot compare to mine.

"TSMC's current confrontation with me is completely pointless. The AI ​​era is upon us! As a wafer foundry, you just need to focus on producing and you can sit back and relax."

Stan Shih tried to smooth things over: "Mr. Chen, please don't be angry. It's not that Mr. Zeng doesn't understand technology; he's just been away from the front lines for too long. I understand what you mean, but after all, this involves giving away all of our data to others, so we're bound to have some concerns."

"Hmph, Samsung and GlobalFoundries don't care about any of them, but you guys do? Back then you were the industry leader, and it was fine if you didn't want to give it to them, but do you think it's still three years ago? You're not the industry leader anymore, not even number two, you're number three."

And do you think that just because I don't want this data, no one else will? As AI continues to develop and the EDA industry needs to upgrade, it will still need to ask you for this data. Even if it's not us, someone else will.

Stan Shih knew Chen Yiran was being sophistical. First of all, the EDA industry had previously been a three-way competition, with each company having its own role, and even if they obtained data, they only got a portion of it. No single company had ever completely absorbed the entire industry from top to bottom.

Moreover, even if he were to provide the data, he believed there were ways to optimize it simply by providing anonymized data. Chen Yiran clearly didn't want to do that; he wanted to use his technological advantage to gain the upper hand.

Technically, he was really not qualified to debate with Chen Yiran, so he gave Chen Guoci, who was standing next to him, a look.

After thinking for a moment, Chen Guoci said, "I do not disagree with Mr. Chen's proposal, but according to TSMC's board rules, the removal or election of the chairman or CEO cannot be proposed by temporary motion, but must be written into the agenda."

Before today's meeting, I did not see the agenda for the removal of Liu Deyin, so from a compliance standpoint, at least for this meeting, this agenda item cannot be carried out.

Chen Yiran nodded: "You're right, but I've read the board rules carefully. They only mention that the chairman or CEO needs to be included in the agenda before the meeting."

However, Liu Deyin is not the CEO; he is only the co-CEO. Ladies and gentlemen, I will say this one last time: don't make excuses. I am here today to remove him. If it doesn't pass today, I will convene a shareholders' meeting to fill the vacancy.

Directors should consider the interests of shareholders; those who don't, are unnecessary to keep, right?

Chen Guoci seemed to be a pure compliance machine, actually agreeing with some of Chen Yiran's points: "You're right, the responsibilities of a CEO and a co-CEO are different, so they shouldn't be treated as the same position. I agree to hold a vote today on the temporary removal of Liu Deyin."

However, Mr. Chen, I need to correct you. You cannot dismiss us arbitrarily. Our laws stipulate that if a director is dismissed without justifiable reason during their term of office, the director can claim compensation from the company for any damages suffered as a result. This is mandatory. If you dismiss me, I must claim compensation from TSMC.

This is not a small amount, and it will influence the judgment of many shareholders.

Lee Jong-hee also stepped forward and addressed the independent directors, saying, "It's for the benefit of the shareholders, but not just for the benefit of one shareholder."

TSMC has a board of directors of 10, and if there are fewer than 6 members, an automatic by-election will not be triggered. He would have to remove and elect directors one by one, requiring an extraordinary general meeting each time, which he cannot accomplish. Many shareholders feel he is making TSMC more chaotic, and he may not have everyone's support.

Dear directors, you are independent directors. I hope you remember the original purpose of establishing independent directors: to address the issue of ownership and management rights. I hope you can act in the best interests of the company as a whole, enhance the company's credibility, play a supervisory and checks-and-balances role, and protect the rights and interests of minority shareholders.

Chen Yiran didn't want to delay any longer. He decided to try submitting the application first, figuring there were ways to make it work and ways to make it not work. He didn't say anything more and looked at Zeng Fancheng.

Zeng Fancheng looked around, and when no one else wanted to speak, he took a deep breath: "Alright, regarding the proposal to remove the current co-CEO Liu Deyin, those who agree, please raise your hands."