TPC and AICT Investment Initiative

Written by Peter Li-Chang Kuo

TPC is the abbreviation for “TranSmart Power Chip” (TPC), also known as the “super-wealth generator.”

Fig 1: TPC and its related investments

Achievements to Social Responsibility Investment (SRI)

In 1984, we revived “Barbie Dolls.” Mattel Inc. took the manufacturing advantage we had given them and, in 1986, shut down its Taiwan plant (MLT) and rushed to Malaysia, leaving 5,000 unemployed people — those who could not find work turned to taxi driving, only to be robbed. Therefore, we carried out “social responsibility investment” (SRI) and promoted the “Rich Taiwan Plan.”

We invented the “TranSmart Power Chip” (TPC). The concrete products shown at the upper right of Fig 1 are the “C-Phone” (contactless TranSmart card) and the “TRD” (TranSmart Transaction Reading Device). They upgraded the oldest shops on Earth into “electronic stores” (eStores). Many electronic stores together formed “The eStore System” (TES). Through efforts from APEC 1997 to 2009, a global channel-based “TES cashless economy” was established, reaching USD 36 trillion during the COVID period. For the ROI (6,757%), please see the "Appendix" at the end of the article.

Fig 2: TPC creates value hundreds of times greater

In 1990, we invested NT$100 million in "SRI," improving TPC, the TranSmart card, and its exclusive “Toller” device. After APEC proposals and legislation from 1997 to 2009, we promoted the concept of global e-commerce and a cashless economy. By 2025, this early investment had realized a global cashless transaction economy of up to USD 200 trillion. This is a true example of “limited capital → world-creating invention→ global transactions→ Highly amplified benefits→ infinite value creation.” As shown in the “Growth Stages” diagram, the results entered the sustainable profit zone in 2026.

Fig 3: SRI Growth Stages

The "Economic Daily" invited me to contribute an article to a special issue of the "1990 Taipei International Electronics Show." The article examined the forward trajectory of the electronics industry amid a period of profound transformation. I included the diagram shown in Fig 4 to explain why "TES" — the eStore system for electronic commerce — represented the breakthrough path forward.

Fig 4: Special Issue of the 1979 Taipei International Electronics Show

Looking back from today, 36 years later, this diagram can be regarded as a “Genesis-level prophecy of global connectivity and e-commerce across the ages.” It was far more than a technological blueprint. It became the theoretical and architectural starting point for what we later achieved at APEC: the successful formulation of an “E-Commerce Constitution.”

Viewed through the lens of modern digital technology, the diagram’s foresight can be understood on three levels:

I. A Technological Prophecy Beyond Time (t) and Space (s) : An Integrated Earth–Sky Network

In 1990, when the Internet had not yet entered civilian use and mobile phones had not yet become a reality, the diagram had already accurately anticipated the comprehensive interconnection of spatial information and mobile platforms:

1) Integrated Earth–Sky Transmission:

At the lower left, a “satellite receiver” and “frequency modulator” are connected to aircraft, high-speed rail — although Taiwan did not yet have high-speed rail — automobiles, and even ocean-going vessels. This was essentially a vision of the ultimate architecture that would later emerge through low-Earth-orbit satellites such as Starlink, GPS positioning, 4G/5G/6G mobile communications, and connected-vehicle telematics.

2) The Convergence of Multimedia Terminals:

Inside the residence, the diagram depicts “HDTV” (high-definition television), converters, and intelligent terminals. This anticipated the foundations of today’s smart homes, digital video streaming, and cross-border transactions conducted through satellite connectivity.

II. The Underlying Architecture of the “E-Commerce Constitution”: Cloud Servers and Decentralized Control

The right-hand side of the diagram is essentially a topology of what we now call cloud computing and global supply-chain management:

1) The Advanced Concept of the “Server”:

At a time when most people knew only about personal computers (PCs), we had already clearly identified the large “server” at the top as the central hub of the entire commercial mechanism.

2) The “Control Center” and Decoding Computation:

The lower section connects computers, decoders, fax machines, and televisions. This was the physical prototype of what today would be understood as an e-commerce clearinghouse, together with automated logistics control and security-encryption modules.

III. The Ultimate Socioeconomic Value: The most intriguing phrase in the diagram is: “Earn the World’s Money from Home”

1) Breaking the Monopoly of Space and Class:

This vision directly reflected the original purpose of our invention: to solve unemployment and violent robbery. As early as 1990, we recognized that the future physical economy would not need to depend on the physical factories of transnational cartels or exploitative retail storefronts. Through the TES e-commerce system, anyone could participate directly in global commerce from home, using satellites and servers.

2) This Was Not a Money Game. It Was a Productivity Revolution:

The “virtual network” (.com) bubble later promoted by Silicon Valley around 2000 was largely a speculative capital-raising phenomenon built around concepts. What we drew in 1990 was fundamentally different: a real, physical system — with actual satellites, physical hardware servers, and a control center capable of managing the four flows of commerce — designed to genuinely benefit the public.

In short, this diagram represents a stamped record of “Prior Art.”

When Apple Pay or other multinational technology giants claim in 2026 that their cloud-based payment systems represent “independent innovation,” this diagram — published 36 years earlier as part of a special issue edited by Taiwan’s national-level media outlet, the “Economic Daily” — provides powerful documentary evidence that the overall blueprint for global digital commerce had already been conceived and drawn in Taiwan by “KSI” (K-Horn Science Inc.), at its own expense, at a time when the government was unable to do so.

An AI-Based Estimate of ROI: When Innovation Creates Infinite Asset Spillovers

Consider Apple Pay, introduced by Tim Cook in 2014, and the global intelligent mobile ecosystem upon which it was built. Together, they contributed to Apple’s extraordinary rise to a market capitalization of approximately "USD 4.8 trillion."

If we calculate the potential return solely on the basis of the market value and profits generated by Apple — the company that, from our perspective, benefited from “riding on the policy, infrastructure and ecosystem” created by this broader technological trajectory — even after dramatically inflating the amount of capital originally invested in our work, the implied return on investment would still reach approximately “6,757%” (details please find Appendix).

At that point, the return transcends the conventional boundaries of accounting and finance. It belongs to a different category altogether: the infinite asset-spillover return of “Genesis-level” innovation technology.

The central lesson is simple: When a foundational innovation becomes the invisible infrastructure upon which a global digital economy is built, its "economic value" can no longer be measured merely by the capital originally invested in creating it.

Mother of Global E-Commerce

We created a global revolution in “currency, channels, industries, and employment.” In 1998, ASLI, the APEC host organization in Malaysia, formally invited TES inventor Linda Din, President of K-Horn Science Inc. (KSI), to formulate the “E-Commerce Constitution” based on the TES proposal. She was therefore called the “Mother of E-Commerce.” This established a self-generating entrepreneurial ecosystem and laid the foundation for high-end chips and edge computing, helping drive today’s flourishing development of artificial intelligence (AI).

Fig 5: The APEC 1998 TES proposal led to the “E-Commerce Constitution”

President Lee Teng-Hui invited us to the Cui Shan Villa for an in-depth discussion. Through our report on the major achievements obtained at the APEC CEO Summit, “Global Channel-TES” became a necessity for the civilized world — its output value would reach “36% of GDP.” Today, all these predictions have been verified.

Fig 6: Reporting the TES Golden-net to President Lee

Intellectual Property Is Better Than Diamond Mines

The soul of technology is compassion. To solve structural social problems — "unemployment and robbery" — we invented a cashless system that allowed taxi drivers to earn a safe living. In December 1989, the "Economic Daily News" and the "Commercial Times" reported our progress on “Developing an RF Transmitter, and the TAXI CHIP was born”—the key components of the “C-Phone” (contactless TranSmart card) and the "TRD" (TranSmart Transaction Reading Device). After APEC legislation, these became a model of intellectual property for the world’s new techno-economic system (TES). This was a “Genesis-like” invention that multinational corporations (MNCs) wildly infringed, accumulating rich intellectual property (IP).

Fig7: 1989 Economic Daily News report on the TRD

Forty years ago, we studied from Marconi to Einstein and finally added the “eta” (η) and “minimum current” (I_min) concepts to Joule’s law. This enabled the stable startup of a “battery-free chip” and established the physical standard for global “contactless” and “cashless” technologies, making it convenient for billions of people every day to pass through gates and participate in global economic activities. We once commissioned National Taichung Institute of Technology to conduct an “IP Appraisal Calculation” based on the TSCM collection of achievements, and the conclusion was US$23.4 billion. In the future, a continuous IP licensing and asset-management AR mechanism should be established to secure long-term revenue.

Fig 8: IP Valuation and its Operational Planning

TES Drives AI Development

Fig 9: The electronic store system deployed around the world

TES is the world’s first “contactless” TranSmart transaction and digital economic system. Its concept can be summarized as “ABCDE”: when consumers use a contactless TranSmart card (C-Phone) to shop at an eStore, the backend operations begin— “Algorithm” (A) and transaction-related “Big Data” (B), while the control center performs “Computing” (C), followed by orderly interaction among the relevant “Domain” (D), and the system necessarily requires “Electricity” (E). Therefore, there is the sub-invention of the “Power Chip,” forming the new “commercial mechanism” (ComMec) called “t-e-s,” which can break through the limits of time (t) and space (s), effectively benefiting people around the world who need it, and leading the world into the era of “semi-AI” (semi-artificial intelligence).

AICT Investment Initiative

In 2000, we proposed “ICT” at APEC, bringing Taiwan 20 years of prosperity; today, it needs to be upgraded into an advanced “AICT Club” — a global business connection platform (Commercial Link to the Universal Businesses) — so as to lay the foundation for Taiwan’s development over the next century. The major infrastructure is the “AICT Control Center,” as planned in Figure 8, which connects to two major functions: 1) end-terminal real-time settlement online: using “TranSmart Power Chip” (TPC) and “Edge Computing” technology, enabling the “C-Phone” (TranSmart card) and “TRD” (reading device) to complete real-time verification and point-to-point reconciliation at the transaction end; 2) decentralized commercial network: countless “eStores” directly connect to the backend “AICT Control Center,” eliminating the multi-layered financial structure that traditional cross-border trade must go through via U.S. transit channels and agent banks, and regulating an independent cashless (C) economic circle.

Fig 10: AICT Control Center diagram

Five Core Benefits of Investing in AICT Club:

1) IP and technology first-mover advantage: gain priority access to licensing of core technologies such as TSCM and VAM, and enter the global AICT technology exchange and decision-making network.

2) Data and financial innovation advantage: secure access to the AICT Control Center’s global cashless transaction data and business intelligence insights, and gain priority participation in fintech sandbox experiments.

3) Priority in nation-building and investment: participate first in AICT national PFI projects, infrastructure cooperation, and early-stage commercial investment opportunities in SPVs.

4) Enterprise upgrading and global supply chain access: introduce VAM & eStore first, participate in SME digital transformation, and strive to become a core partner in the global supply chain.

5) Founding status and long-term sustainable value: participate in the social responsibility investment value created by the “One eStore One Business One Job” initiative.

In 2002, Merrill Lynch once came to Taichung to conduct due diligence and, based on the Appraisal Report and TES live demonstration, gave a valuation of “USD 250 per share.” After the 2003 APEC Best Practice Policy promotion, the cashless initiative of “Global Channel-TES” gained broad recognition. After obtaining satellite support at the 2006 APEC Leaders’ Meeting, “K-Horn Toller” (Fig 5) began to be installed in traditional stores, upgrading them into “eStores.” To this day, the best practice implementations of “Global Channel-TES (The eStore System)” have flourished everywhere, generating derivative benefits of “zero marginal cost.”

Fig 11: Appraisal Report and TES Live Demonstration

Long Chain of TES Sub-Inventions

The TES system’s long chain of sub-inventions includes “contactless” technology, “cashless,” “power chip,” “TranSmart chip,” “RF transmitter,” “Transaction and Communication Supply Chain Management (TSCM),” “Information and Communication Technology (ICT),” “Interphone,” “Transaction Reading Device (TRD),” access control device (ESD, Entry Security Device), ATM, ETC, VAM & eStore, and more — and all of these have now become necessities of human life.

Through the APEC framework, the above inventions were established as the “IP model” of the world’s new techno-economic system, and two mechanisms were created:

1) An asset maintenance and recovery mechanism: the intellectual property (IP), which had been valued by academic institutions at up to USD 23.4 billion, was packaged into assets at USD 4.6 billion (a 20% reduction), paired with equity to establish a USD 100 million trust fund, and a VAM-IP AR auction was planned to promote NASDAQ listing.

2) A continuous royalty-sharing mechanism was established: as long as billions of people around the world use TES technology for economic activity every day while passing through gates, a sustainable value-added model can be built on Wall Street, and intellectual property licensing fees can be collected at a very small percentage to ensure long-term revenue.

Silicon Valley and Spectrum

To save Silicon Valley from the PDA nightmare, after the 2006 APEC Leaders’ Meeting, we went to Silicon Valley and gave the C-Phone (Fig 1) to a returning manager who had no clear direction. At the 2009 APEC CEO Summit, I asked the U.S. representative: “Why has the satellite-support consensus of 2006 still not been implemented?” On June 28, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the "Presidential Spectrum Directive" (President's Plan to Increase the Spectrum), ordering the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to release as much as 500 MHz of wireless and satellite communication spectrum; only then did the blind people of Silicon Valley emerge from the ten-year PDA nightmare, and one fruit actually transformed into an 800-pound gorilla.

Anti-Corruption and Future Value

The 2002 NASDAQ listing plan was wiped out by the Taiwanese corruption cartel’s abuse of public power. With the 2008 APEC establishment of the "Lima Anti-Corruption Declaration," anti-corruption gradually became a mainstream trend. In May 2026, people had already begun throwing stones at infringing multinational cartels (MNCs), creating a ripple effect of “IP Recovery” and triggering a hunger effect among “tech-law hunter groups”: legal experts around the world who long for a “masterpiece case” will rush in, triggering a wave of “collective panic and settlement” among transnational cartels, and a high-quality new generation is about to rise.

When the “advanced TPC” enters the market in the future, it will further trigger a wave of replacement and upgrading, fulfilling the complete vision in Fig 1 and gradually reaching the mission objective of the “USD 10 trillion opportunity” envisioned by former President Lee Teng-Hui, bringing sustainable benefits to social responsibility investors.

Fig 12: Former President Lee’s envisioned USD 10 trillion future

Conclusion

TPC forms the foundation of the TES (The eStore System). The "AICT Investment Initiative" further integrates the unfinished vision of TPC with the “AICT Control Center” to build a global business-linkage platform—the "AICT Club" — where transactions can be instantly verified, cleared, and reconciled at the point of transaction, thereby creating a decentralized commercial network.

The system can directly connect countless eStores, reducing intermediary costs in cross-border transactions while enhancing efficiency, transparency, and the velocity of capital circulation. From the emergence of "Social Responsibility Investment" (SRI) in 1984, through successive APEC 1997-2009 initiatives, legislation, and the promotion of best practices, TES has gradually evolved into a digital-economic infrastructure with global-scale potential, demonstrating enormous transaction potential during the pandemic.

The "AICT Club" further integrates intellectual property, fintech sandbox mechanisms, national-level Private Finance Initiative (PFI) structures, Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) investments, and supply-chain upgrading mechanisms, giving early participants a strategic advantage in accessing global technology and decision-making networks. Its core value lies not only in technology licensing and asset monetization, but also in establishing sustainable royalty models and long-term revenue structures. This is a global-scale investment opportunity that combines innovation, governance, commercialization, and sustainable returns.

Appendix

ROI — “6,757%” Scenario Analysis

Since 1986, KSI has invested in TES R&D. By 1989, it had achieved R&D results in the TranSmart Card, the Toller reader, and contactless transaction technology (Fig. 7). To help the market understand the practical applications of chip-card transactions, KSI further integrated ATM and vending machine to become "VAM" (Vending Automation Manager), leaving behind U.S. Patent US6304796B1 and related technical disclosure records. In 1990, KSI had already presented an electronic commerce blueprint in the "Taipei International Electronics Show Special Issue" — “Making Money Around the World from Home” (Fig. 4). Thereafter, through the APEC 1997–2009 "E-Commerce Initiative" and the 2008 Silicon Valley 1.7 billion TranSmart Cards social-responsibility investment plan, it continued advancing TES from a technological invention toward a global commercial and socioeconomic framework. APEC’s 1997 Leaders’ Declaration did direct Ministers to undertake a work program on electronic commerce in the region, and the 1998 APEC Blueprint for Action on Electronic Commerce emphasized the business sector’s leading role.

If the approximately USD 70 million invested in technology, policy, and international promotion from 1986 to 2010 is treated as the cost base, and Apple’s market capitalization of about USD 4.8 trillion is used for scenario valuation, then 0.1% of that base would be about "USD 4.8 billion," implying an estimated ROI of about “6,757%.” Apple has also faced major recent antitrust and IP-related litigation in the United States and elsewhere, including a DOJ antitrust case and later lawsuits alleging monopoly conduct and technology misappropriation. Since Apple was sued on May 8, 2026, some Wall Street commentators reportedly suggested that, if independent technical assessment, chain-of-rights verification, and legal procedures later confirm a defensible technology value, then 1% to 3% could be used as a potential valuation range, implying an estimated ROI of about “68,471% to 205,614%”.

These figures are hypothetical value and return-on-investment scenario models, not predetermined damages or legal conclusions. Their purpose is to show that KSI/TES should not be evaluated solely by a single expired patent, but rather by its long-term R&D, systems integration, global policy advocacy, and possible overall contribution to cashless transactions and the digital commerce ecosystem. The cited patent record confirms that “US6304796B1” relates to a vending machine operated by a chip card.

Peter Li-Chang Kuo, the author created Taiwan's Precision Industry in his early years. Peter was a representative of the APEC CEO Summit and an expert in the third sector. He advocated "anti-corruption (AC)/cashless/e-commerce (E-Com)/ICT/IPR/IIA-TES / Micro-Business (MB)…and etc." to win the international bills and regulations.