Over the past few weeks, he'd been sending back-and-forth emails to the three companies in hopes of getting good offers for partnership. Aside from that, Henry engaged himself with HackerOne bounties.
Previously, he'd been pretty quick in submitting the bounties so he didn't cover the full scope and there could've been more bugs or solutions he would've discovered but he didn't. During this time, he patiently looked through all the bugs he found and made his reports even more detailed covering every single detail about it he could find.
He'd been steadily climbing the leaderboards and even accumulated a bit over $400,000. Although he hadn't reached the ranking of people who'd been doing it for years, his ranking was often placed among the top 10 in critical report findings. Thanks to his detailed analysis, as well as including the solution to the issues, he was often paid more and got lots of job offers.
Aside from that, today, he'd finally concluded a deal with one of the three companies. Microsoft were the slowest in responding so they were still coming up with offers to acquire rights to his AI. IBM as well was still trying to negotiate with him.
Google on the other hand, maybe felt emails weren't convenient or they were trying to conclude the deal as soon as possible. Whatever the reason, they requested a call to be set up with Henry. He found this pleasing as it would speed up the process dramatically. The call took effect 3 days ago. The summary of their meeting went as follows:
They exchanged pleasantries before getting into the main topic. The representative from Google named James asked if it was the offer that was too low that he was unwilling to sell the AI. Henry explained that although their offer was enticing, he had no intentions of selling it as he wanted to build it.
After confirming it, James just asked a few more questions before they moved on to discussing the partnership conditions. Henry explained that what he needed was a promotion from them. What he envisioned was a dedicated section on their website, showcasing the AI's abilities.
After negotiating, in return, Henry would make exclusive Google sign-up/sign-ins. People would be unable to sign in using other mail types except Google Mail. 30% of all income would also go toward Google until they receive $1 million. This partnership would last 6 months and even if Google didn't get the $1 Million at the end of the 6 months, they'd be the one at loss so this was favorable to Henry.
…
Henry finally received an email explaining the details of their partnership along with a contract to be signed. The contract would only take effect once two conditions are satisfied. The first is that the AI should be readily available for the public to use and the second is the exclusive webpage for Phantma is also publicly available.
After reviewing the contract a couple of times, he finally signed and sent it back to Google. With this completed, he only needed to wait for feedback from Google. Although he could immediately set his AI and get started, he wanted to know when the exclusive webpage would be done so he could ask them to set a release date timer.
He felt that if given some time, it would become an AI people highly anticipate. It would feature a couple of demos created by the AI and that would spark some excitement among people. Although most of these AI companies tend to use the best possible output their AI creates, he didn't need that as his AI created videos and images that were near perfect.
Even if there was a mistake, it was easily adjustable without having any additional costs. And unlike the majority of the AI that uses 'Credits', immediately after you purchase the subscription, you have unlimited use of the features in your tier.
The free plan had unlimited access to the AI chatbot and also 20 free image generations but you're unable to make follow-up edits to the image. The first tier allows you to generate an infinite amount of images and can add follow-up prompts to edit the image. The second tier does the same as the first tier but with an infinite amount of videos to generate. The first tier costs $9.99 while the second tier costs $19.99 and they're both monthly plans.
After completing everything he needed to do, Henry took a look at the time and realized he was getting late. He received a message from Michael a couple of days ago, inviting him to join him for his birthday celebration. Although they've only known each other for a little over a month, they talked often and shared ideas and Michael often gave Henry tips.
Michael didn't know what Henry was doing but he just assumed he was trying to start up a business or something. Before he met with the Google representative, Michael explained some tips for negotiating and it was generally just to keep confident but it was very useful. Michael of course had no idea he was speaking with a Google representative, he probably just assumed Henry had a potential investor.
Henry already purchased a few clothes, and although basic, they still looked good. He didn't want to embarrass a friend by showing up looking tattered. After calling an Uber, Henry made his way to the address Michael sent him.
Upon arrival, Henry was shocked. He was standing in front of a grand estate. He originally thought Michael worked at MicroCenter, although he wasn't wearing the uniform when they met, he didn't think much of it. He was also very knowledgeable about servers, more than the other staff he'd talked to which led him to believe so.
But now, he began to think otherwise. Even if he rented the place temporarily to host the party, it wasn't cheap. Henry pressed the button of what seemed to be a doorbell and he heard a voice say "Purpose of visit?". It came from the device he had just pressed. "I was invited to Michael's Birthday party" Henry answered the voice with a bit of apprehension.
Afterwards, the voice didn't say anything so just to be on the safe side he called Michael and informed him he was waiting outside and asked again to confirm if this was the place. Michael responded jokingly "What, you don't believe I can own a place like this". Henry was taken aback, how did he not know Michael was rich, he shook his head. "No, No… You just hid it too well".
"Well, if you asked, I wouldn't hide it," Michael said sounding shameless. "Someone should receive you soon, just wait a bit," Micheal affirmed.
"Alright thanks, I'm waiting," Henry said before ending the call.
Henry took another glance at the huge estate in front of him and shook his head. With his ability to make money, he wasn't poor, especially if given time but at the moment, an estate of this size was out of reach.
Shortly after, the gates opened and a guard wearing a white shirt and black trousers bowed slightly at Henry and stretched his hand indicating for him to enter.