Worldbuilding: Quintus Technologies
In some ways, Quintus Technologies of TFMR is like M.E.C.H in TFP. Major difference is that Quintus Tech is not a bunch of bad guys who bot-naps Cybertronians. In fact, they are more like a group of nerds who formed some sort of cult revolving around technological advancement. They aren't necessarily villains, as all they want to do is to make cool stuff and rather not do crimes like kidnap an alien robot to dissect them. They do some major damage later in the plot though, but maybe that's more of their "overly successful" programming project's fault.
Many people speculated that ww3 will revert humanity back to stone age. Turns out, humans were more resilient than they thought. Although they have lost a large portion of technological wonders they cherished due to nuclear war, the remnants they found were enough to give them hints how to rebuild their world to former glory.
During the transitioning period from post-apocalyptic wreckage to somewhat stabilized state, many people dedicated their lives to restoring lost technologies. Some of them turned it into business, and some survived long enough to become today's equivalent of major companies.
Quintus is one of the oldest, and currently the most influential company in TFMR-verse Earth.
When other companies focused on building machineries that could immediately help with building and agriculture, The founder of Quintus Tech decided to invest in computer science. It wasn't easy, since pre-war generations were dying and post-war generations would rather do something that helps their immediate survival rather than sitting still and staring at monitors all day. So, Quintus remained relatively unknown for a long time.
When all the encessary foundations to support advanced technology was completed once again, Quintus Tech rose to the surface. No other companies could match against Quintus tech's knowledge that they cumulated over the decades. When others hurriedly began to recreate the relics of old times, Quintus was already producing something that was one step further.
At one point, the company underwent some strange events. No one knew exactly what had happened, but after that point they began to produce technologies that did not exist pre-war. They found ways to remove radiation contamination from an area and produce fuel as its by-product. They made medical nanites that hepled people recover from injuries and diseases. They shot orbital garbage collectors to space so that they could retrieve valuable resources from debris floating in there. They would have made a lot of profit out of those, but the price of such techs looked like as if they were more interested in giving them away.
Although many welcomed their generosity and accepted it without question, Some people grew suspicious of them and demanded explanations, as these seemed too advanced to exist. (It later turns out that Pharma, Decepticon's CMO, had been secretly in touch with the company. She did admit using them as her sidekicks for whatever research she had been doing, but she had absolutely no idea how did these primitive beings figure out how to create a crude yet perfectly safe version of artificial energon.)
Rival companies constantly tried to peek at in-dev techs from Quintus Tech's labs. Both attempts failed, firstly because the company was very tight-lipped, and secondly no one could find where the R&D department was located. The most closest one to get to the secret of Quintus was the CEO of Tristar Group (one of the rivals), who managed to plant a spy amongst the inner circle of the company. The Spy was soon "removed", but not before spilling the fact that an advanced artificial intelligence was under development, that was nothing like the world has ever seen. This AI entity would be introduced later, but for now let's just call it T.E.S.S.A.
