Nick had been running on fumes for days, but if you asked who the busiest people in the company were, he wouldn't even make the top ten.
Right now, the Business Operations Department was the eye of the storm. Ever since pre-orders went live, the entire floor had been operating at a breakneck pace. Facing an avalanche of orders, the small team was drowning. Tyler had moved his desk there personally to oversee the chaos while riding HR's back to recruit more logistical talent immediately.
He was also pulling staff from every other department just to keep the lights on, ensuring the ops team could maintain full power. Though Nick's workload wasn't quite as frenetic, he was doing his best to manage the high-level logistics and support the front line.
As the first wave of users finally got their hands on the H1, their reviews began to flood social media. Combined with the lingering hype from the keynote, sales hit a second massive growth spurt.
"Seven hundred thousand units!" an employee monitoring the real-time dashboard suddenly yelled.
Clap, clap, clap, clap... The office erupted into cheers. It wasn't just professional pride; their bonuses were tied to these milestones, and everyone knew they were witnessing a once-in-a-career launch.
Tyler stood up, gesturing for a bit of quiet. "Keep pushing, guys! Let's break that million-unit mark. Once this storm passes, the open bar is on the company!"
"Thanks, Boss! Let's get it!"
The staff dived back into their screens with renewed energy. Tyler let out a long, weary sigh and turned to Nick, who had been watching from the sidelines. "I'm serious, man. If you don't find me more help, I'm going to collapse."
Nick grinned. "Don't look at me. I've already got Lin Jianliang out there headhunting, but you can't build a department overnight. Honestly, Tyler, this is on you. Your initial projections were way too conservative. If you'd prepared for a hit, we wouldn't be in this mess."
"How was I supposed to know sales would be this aggressive?" Tyler shook his head with a wry smile. "We expected a steady climb. Instead, we got a vertical wall. Honestly, it's a good thing we only opened online channels. If we had physical storefronts to manage right now, we'd be dead."
Nick tossed him a cigarette, lit one for himself, and they walked over to the break lounge. "We still need those offline channels, though. A lot of people are still skeptical about the tech. They need to see it, touch it, and hear it to realize how far ahead we are."
"So you want to start looking at real estate for Militech stores?" Tyler asked.
Nick shook his head. "Not yet. We don't have the boots on the ground to manage our own retail footprint. How about this: reach out to the big-box retailers—Best Buy, Target, maybe some of the high-end tech boutiques. Discuss a partnership for demo kiosks. We can concede a bit on the margin; the priority is using their foot traffic and infrastructure to serve our customers."
"Got it. I'll have someone reach out. Actually, a few of their reps have already been blowing up my phone," Tyler replied.
After the launch, the H1 had become an overnight sensation. Between the professional benchmarks and the glowing user testimonials, the company was suddenly a "unicorn" in the eyes of investors—everyone wanted a piece of the action.
But Nick and the team weren't exactly rolling out the red carpet for these corporate suitors. They were either blowing them off with generic replies or flat-out refusing meetings, which left a lot of jealous competitors fuming.
Every major player knew this was a massive market opportunity. Every tech giant had been trying to launch their own "smart" voice products for years. But now Militech, a complete unknown, had dropped an era-defining AI and hit the market so fast it caught everyone flat-footed.
If this were just a standard gadget, they wouldn't care; they'd just muscle in and take a slice of the pie. The market was plenty big. But the H1 wasn't just another product—it was a total disruption of the status quo. It was the "iPhone moment" for voice assistants. If they didn't catch up immediately, they'd be the next Blackberry.
Sensing the crisis, these companies were split between trying to buy Nick out and trying to reverse-engineer the tech. Neither path was working. Militech wasn't selling, and the lab results were devastating for the competition.
The H1's kernel was written in a language they'd never seen, built on a completely alien architecture. At first, they thought it was a variation of the latest "V language," but a deeper look proved them wrong. On top of the new language and architecture, the encryption was a nightmare.
Technical experts spent sleepless nights trying to crack it, only to find that even the peripheral tech they could understand was locked behind a wall of hundreds of newly registered patents and copyrights. Even if they somehow cloned the kernel, they'd never be able to ship a product without getting sued into oblivion.
But the most desperate group wasn't the software giants—it was the smartphone manufacturers. Reps from several major mobile brands had been camping out in hotels near the Militech offices for days. Since Nick and Tyler were buried in sales logistics, they hadn't been able to get a single meeting. Now, those reps were calling every hour, begging for five minutes on the schedule.