5 ms·

I wonder what Apple thinks once they will see their IP exfiltrated like this

by rvnx 7y ago

dmix 7y ago
I’m sure that would be the first thing the VCs would ask about before putting $50m into the business. The three worked on mobile chips at Apple and Google, and are now focusing on enterprise data centres. So it’s not exactly the same. > That said, what’s interesting is that while the troika of founders all have a background in mobile chipsets, they are indeed focused on the data center broadly conceived (i.e. cloud computing), and specifically reading between the lines, to finding more energy-efficient ways that can combat the rising climate cost of machine learning workflows and computation-intensive processing. > The company’s CMO did tell me that the startup is building “a custom clean sheet designed from the ground up” and isn’t encumbered by legacy designs. In other words, the company is building its own custom core, but leaving its options open on whether it builds on top of ARM’s architecture (which is its intention today) or other architectures in the future.
- rvnx 7y ago
  It can simply be a form of risk-management by Dell/VCs. How likely is that Apple going to sue them? How likely the company going to succeed and deal with the issue? It's rarely black or white. We have seen it with the case of Uber and the self-driving cars. In their own words, they said they will reuse knowledge from ARM and Apple (including Desktop CPUs). As public investor of Apple, yes I think it's a very legitimate question.
  - dmix 7y ago
    Of course it's a legitimate question, it's an obvious question, which is why the CMO mentioned clean room building it and the founders having worked on a combined 100 patents. VC's do plenty of due-diligence, they don’t invest blindly when there’s such an obvious risk. The Uber case was quite rare and egregious. It's not as simple as working on similar stuff. Uber directly acquiring a company (well after raising hundreds of millions) made by someone who worked at Google to work on the exact same thing which is far riskier than working on a completely different product category you're building from scratch. But even then the case against Uber heavily relied on the fact he stole IP directly from company computers and used that as the base of the product.
_jal 7y ago
What specifically makes you think they pulled a Levandowski?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

I wonder what Apple thinks once they will see their IP exfiltrated like this

by rvnx 7y ago

I wonder what Apple thinks once they will see their IP exfiltrated like this

dmix 7y ago

I’m sure that would be the first thing the VCs would ask about before putting $50m into the business. The three worked on mobile chips at Apple and Google, and are now focusing on enterprise data centres. So it’s not exactly the same. > That said, what’s interesting is that while the troika of founders all have a background in mobile chipsets, they are indeed focused on the data center broadly conceived (i.e. cloud computing), and specifically reading between the lines, to finding more energy-efficient ways that can combat the rising climate cost of machine learning workflows and computation-intensive processing. > The company’s CMO did tell me that the startup is building “a custom clean sheet designed from the ground up” and isn’t encumbered by legacy designs. In other words, the company is building its own custom core, but leaving its options open on whether it builds on top of ARM’s architecture (which is its intention today) or other architectures in the future.

rvnx 7y ago
It can simply be a form of risk-management by Dell/VCs. How likely is that Apple going to sue them? How likely the company going to succeed and deal with the issue? It's rarely black or white. We have seen it with the case of Uber and the self-driving cars. In their own words, they said they will reuse knowledge from ARM and Apple (including Desktop CPUs). As public investor of Apple, yes I think it's a very legitimate question.
- dmix 7y ago
  Of course it's a legitimate question, it's an obvious question, which is why the CMO mentioned clean room building it and the founders having worked on a combined 100 patents. VC's do plenty of due-diligence, they don’t invest blindly when there’s such an obvious risk. The Uber case was quite rare and egregious. It's not as simple as working on similar stuff. Uber directly acquiring a company (well after raising hundreds of millions) made by someone who worked at Google to work on the exact same thing which is far riskier than working on a completely different product category you're building from scratch. But even then the case against Uber heavily relied on the fact he stole IP directly from company computers and used that as the base of the product.

_jal 7y ago

What specifically makes you think they pulled a Levandowski?

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]