The announcement was soon sent out and Ludo quickly had Blue finalise a contract to send over to Rowan. The details were all in Ludo's favour, since he had all the upper hands in this negotiation — in fact, there wasn't even any negotiation to speak of. Rowan had to listen to all of Ludo's demands or Blue would be sold to the runner up, it was as simple as that.
For one, Ludo didn't promise ownership of Blue 1.0 to ChatCGT, but a 10 year license allowing them, and only them, to distribute it and profit off of it. Of course, Ludo also accepted that he wouldn't sell the rights to any other company in this 10 year period.
There were various reasons why Ludo didn't want to give away ownership of Blue 1.0, but it was mainly because he didn't want to inhibit the AI market in the long run.
By only selling an exclusive license, he made sure that they, and every other company out there, would still have to sink their funds into their own AI development.
If he didn't do this and just sold Blue 1.0 and all its source code and some research to ChatCGT, then they would forever remain 10 years ahead of the rest of the market and essentially become a monopoly.
But a 10 year license only made it so that they would only remain the industry leader until everyone else caught up — though they'd still have a slight edge on their competitors from learning from Blue 1.0.
Of course, some might call Ludo out for being a hypocrite for doing this, as wasn't he still that exact monopoly that he wanted to avoid creating? Well, in that case he didn't care.
After this, there were no plans in the future to re-enter the AI market, and he'd just let the other companies do their things.
Him using Blue 1.0 as a bargaining chip was just him getting his foot in the market and building a reputation for Blue Star Technologies — not to mention the capital he'd receive to be able to start up his other much more important ventures!
Naturally, the reactions from all the other executives on his decision to sell to ChatCGT could be described as nothing more than 'outraged' — though Ludo couldn't care less about their cries of indignation and profanities.
The moment the deal was finalised, he'd already thrown any thoughts of them to the back of his mind.
Ding!
[Your account has received $500,000,000 from ChatCGT Technologies Inc.]
And when he finally saw that huge string of numbers enter his bank account, he couldn't help but keel backwards in exciting laughter.
That's it!
He'd done it! Ludo was finally a multi-millionaire — he'd achieved a goal that less than 0.1% of people would ever even dream of achieving.
But his excitement gradually began to subside over time as he began to think.
'This is only the beginning for me. I've only just crossed the starting line, let alone reaching the finish line…'
Now that he finally had a starting capital he could actually work with, he began to finally start getting to work on the real projects he wished to work on.
Firstly, he immediately called up his bank to pay off the loan he'd received from them not even a few days ago. They were naturally surprised and suspicious upon hearing his request, especially when they checked his account and found such a huge string of zeros sitting there.
After all, why would someone need a $100,000 loan when he had so much money at his disposal.
They had Ludo on the line for over an hour while they tried to investigate the source of his funds and its credibility, before they eventually gave in, realising that they'd find nothing no matter how hard they looked.
***
The news of the sale of Blue 1.0 to ChatCGT quickly made headlines as the word began to spread, with ChatCGT themselves helping the most to spread the news in their quickly thought up marketing strategy.
And while they tried their hardest to avoid and questions to where this industry defying product came from, the media eventually found out themselves.
Thanks to ChatCGT's competitors slipping some information to their journalist contacts, the name Blue Star Technologies quickly became just as popular as Blue 1.0 itself — they were the ones who developed the technology after all.
For the first time, Ludo felt countless eyes of public scrutiny baring down on his previously unknown company.
Having never felt such a huge amount of attention on him, Ludo did feel a little overwhelmed, especially when the journalists found his contact information on the company website and started spamming him with emails asking for interviews.
But at the same time, he was extremely satisfied.
While those salty competitors spread the word of his company out of spite, likely just trying to create some pressure of their own since they couldn't get their hands on Blue 1.0 — they had actually helped him out more than he could have done himself.
This was much more effective marketing than anything he could have thought up, and while he was sure he could have done something similar with Blue, it still wouldn't live up to the strongest form of marketing of them all — word of mouth.
A rather funny point to note was that the contract between ChatCGT and Blue Star Technologies had actually been leaked, which was rather humiliating for Rowan.
When the public and media realised that ChatCGT were parading themselves around as the new industry leader despite not even developing or owning the technology that gave them this status, Ludo wished he could have seen Rowan's face.
However, when he looked at his newly made purchase, all of the entertaining news over the past few days were immediately pushed aside.