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Nvidia's $20B antitrust loophole
- ossa-ma 10mo agoNo shade but most other coverage will focus on whether this signals an AI bubble. That's missing the story. Nvidia explicitly did NOT acquire Groq. They licensed the IP and hired the talent. This structure dodges CFIUS review (Groq had $1.5B in Saudi government contracts), antitrust scrutiny, and years of regulatory delays. The $13B premium over the September valuation was the cost of regulatory arbitrage. Announced Christmas Eve while Trump's AI Czar (Chamath's All-In podcast co-host) is in office. Chamath's Social Capital made AT LEAST ~$2B on this exit. My article breaks down: what Nvidia actually bought vs what they left behind, why the deal structure matters, who got paid, and the political connections nobody's talking about.
- lotsofpulp 10mo ago> Why do I hate Chamath? >Let's look at the sh he dumped on retail with his abysmal SPAC track record I do not see why one would feel animosity towards Chamath for this reason. Was there fraud involved? Otherwise, all investors are liable for doing their own due diligence.
- ossa-ma 10mo agoPart of it is the irrational feeling of a disgruntled investor, doubt that I'm alone. The other part is he has a track record of dumping on retail then telling them not to buy his next deal once he's already cashed out.
- Aboutplants 10mo agoGiven his track record of dumping on retail, one could view this as a signal no? He’s obviously capturing value, but also shedding long term risk which is starting to pile up.
- design2203 10mo agoNobody in finance holds a high opinion of Chamath.
- didntknowyou 10mo agoas if people in finance have a reputation for morals? if anything chamath is great at making deals that worked to his favour.
- design2203 10mo agoHello chamath
- ALittleLight 10mo agoYou can feel animosity towards someone without thinking they've met the elements of a crime.
- lovich 10mo agoDo you need someone to commit a crime to hate them? Do you still need them to commit a crime when they are rich and powerful, and connected with the current administration that sets the law? If a new law came out that said Chamath can do whatever he wants and it’s always legal, is it impossible to hate him in your worldview?
- yellow_postit 10mo agoIt will be interesting to see if this is an exit for investors and which ones. Given it wasn’t an acquisition but licensing.
- throw123h1z1q 10mo agoAxios claims that the $20B in cash will be paid out proportionally, so Trump Jr. will have his September investment tripled. The article looks AI assisted but claims "according to sources": https://www.axios.com/2025/12/28/nvidia-groq-shareholders https://www.axios.com/2025/12/28/nvidia-groq-shareholders
- throw123h1z1q 10mo agoTrump Jr. also got in in September via 1789 Capital, where he is partner. After that Nvidia got permission to export GPUs to China. In the meantime, Musk and Chamath have the gall to complain about the kleptocracy in democratic states and the poor suppressed billionaires: https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/2005287147507769442#m https://xcancel.com/elonmusk/status/2005287147507769442#m I wonder when Chamath will sit again on Tucker Carlson and tell a sob story about having self doubts.
- LarsDu88 10mo agoSo many companies doing non-"acquisitions" during this AI boom! Though this one is at least more comprehensive than say, Google simply hiring back Noam Shazeer from Character.AI or OpenAI taking Windsurf
- frays 10mo agoGoogle also hired the core Windsurf engineering and research team, not OpenAI: https://www.reuters.com/business/google-hires-windsurf-ceo-researchers-advance-ai-ambitions-2025-07-11/ https://www.reuters.com/business/google-hires-windsurf-ceo-r...
- nextworddev 10mo ago[dead]
- jgalt212 10mo ago[flagged]
- terabytest 10mo agoThis is about Groq (the semiconductor company), not Grok (xAI’s LLM).
- recursivecaveat 10mo agoIf nothing else this deal will probably sunset this unending point of confusion lmao.
- jarym 10mo agoI don't think Musk has anything to do with Groq AI (his Grok model is from xAI)
- danr4 10mo agoGrok != Groq
- yunnpp 10mo agoLegend of the Gobbos
- bouchard 10mo agoThis is a about Groq, not Grok (Musk's chatbot).
- jgalt212 10mo agomea culpa!
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- yalogin 10mo agoNvidia bought groq? I am out of the loop but what does groq have that they want?
- daemonologist 10mo agoNvidia hired all their top personnel and paid $20B to license their technology, but stopped short of actually acquiring the company. Very similar to how Google didn't buy Windsurf. I assume it's more about what Groq had that Nvidia didn't want, which was competition (in inference hardware).
- yesco 10mo agoI'll just make note here for anyone else confused that Groq and Grok are distinct entities. They just have similar names. Groq is more of a hardware focused company.
- tonyhart7 10mo agoNvidia losses 200+ billions on recent weeks because Google TPU actually good and market realize that Nvidia have no "moat" this is just panic buying to make stronger foothold
- ThrowawayTestr 10mo agoA chip dedicated to inferencing that's better than their GPUs.
- vineethy 10mo agoI think it's important to note that there's nothing forbidding LPU style determinism from being used in training. They just didn't make that choice. Also tenstorrent could be a viable challenger in this space. It seems to me that their NoC and their chips could be mostly deterministic as long as you don't start adding in branches
- ossa-ma 10mo agoYou're right but my understanding is that Groq's LPU architecture makes it inference-only in practice. Like Groq's chips only have 230MB of SRAM per chip vs 80GB on an H100, training is memory hungry as you need to hold model weights + gradients + optimizer states + intermediate activations.
- refibrillator 10mo agoH100 has 80 GB of HBM3. There’s only like 37 MB of SRAM on a single chip.
- bionhoward 10mo agoWould SRAM make weight updates prohibitive vs DRAM?
- ChrisArchitect 10mo agoRelated: Nvidia to buy assets from Groq for $20B cash https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46379183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46379183
- georgeburdell 10mo agoThis behavior is extremely damaging to the startup scene. Who would join a startup these days unless it’s run by a close friend or relative? At least in that case, the scorned junior employees would have social recourse.
- some_guy_nobel 10mo agoRight? As a former founder, I laugh every time I get a 'Founding Engineer' recruit email...
- paxys 10mo agoYeah unless you are a founder or top investor it’s pretty much a guarantee that there will be no exit.
- evilduck 10mo agoI don't think this makes it much worse because that's hard to do, it's already terrible. Getting screwed by startup founders has been the status quo for at least 15 or 20 years now. If you're just a worker then demand fair market wages, work healthy hours, and treat your useless class of shares as already used and discarded scratch off lottery tickets.
- saghm 10mo agoIt's not like larger companies don't also screw over their employees in various ways. After having to leave AWS due to my fully distributed team that was formed during WFH being forced to "return" to an office that most of ever never lived near, I've preferred working for smaller companies not because I care about equity (I'm in the fortunate position that I can survive comfortably and save for retirement on my salary rather than needing to rely on the value from options/RSUs), but because my confidence in my ability to predict where things are headed goes down increasingly with each additional level of management between me and whoever has the power to arbitrarily decide to upend my employment on a whim. In the long run, I'll probably be fine if my employer doesn't make me rich, so as long as my projected retirement age isn't actively getting pushed back based on my current income and spending, I'd rather optimize for minimizing the likelihood I suddenly find myself unemployed due to untenable working conditions or getting unexpectedly laid off. My experience at startups has been that it's a lot easier to tell when things might start to get dicey several months down the line and start to prepare for if I need to find another gig. With a large company, I've seen that happen much more suddenly for people who had no reason to suspect they might need to in advance.
- websiteapi 10mo agoI wonder how the startup scene will adjust to this if it becomes mainstream. can employee contracts be modified to force compensation even in this case? seems difficult to write one up without weird second order effects. if this does end up being something that is legal and successfully circumvents anti trust, does it mean antitrust actually is a failure in practice? 2026 hasn't even begun and more shenanigans are in flight.
- tonyhart7 10mo agoif we use your logic then every law written would be failure since at some point people would discover loophole/flaw that would get abused the fix is we use more ambiguous words or just stronger government control see how China "control" capitalist on this case if you want absolute government control
- websiteapi 10mo agoisn't it true though that laws that have frequently abused loopholes that effectively go against the spirit of the law are indeed failures? isn't that the entire purpose of having lawmakers who are constantly evaluating such things?
- tonyhart7 10mo agoYeah that is the point of having law maker my point is making a law that a "future proof" is impossible, since guess what???? Human just cant account for every possible future scenario
- makeitdouble 10mo agoYou could see it as a failure to enforce the spirit of the law. Judges have the power to make it right and refuse the loopholes.
- altairprime 10mo agoRegulations shouldn’t have to change with every new fintech innovation, and the IRS already has the necessary laws in place to catch and prosecute abuse of unpredicted loophole technicalities as tax fraud with intent. We’re better off applying a general tax to “gross revenue not paid as wages” and directing it to a universal basic income fund. The purchase price is gross revenue, and the less they pay out as employee wages, the more the (not subject to deductions) tax charge becomes. Sure, they might still fuck over workers, but at least the workers could afford to quit (thanks, UBI) — and VCs would face the choice of taking half the payment and fucking over workers, or taking the same size payment while not fucking over workers. They may be selfish, but they’re not so self-destructive as to choose the former out of spite: it would utterly destroy their ability to hire brilliance in the future, especially once people can afford to say no.
- jimnotgym 10mo agoIANAL, and am especially weak on US law, but I suspect this is only an antitrust loophole if the administration chooses not to act. Substance over form must apply? Pretty sure this wouldn't fly in European law.
- thayne 10mo agoSure, but the US has a history of not acting. If it was a normal acquisition, it would automatically trigger anti-trust investigations. Under the current administration, I think it is unlikely the acquisition would be blocked (although it probably should be...), but it would involve more bureaucracy, and would take longer.
- mahirsaid 10mo agoAcquiring a company due to a loophole strategy is worth exponentially more than what they paid for. Its a good strategy if the aim is to beat the AI bubble and survive it after the smoke clears. not bad. Better than financing numerous data centers for no use when the bubble crashes.
- int_19h 10mo agoUS has fairly weak antitrust post-Bork. But even more importantly, NVIDIA is literally paying extra to the feds right now from each GPU sold to China. So they are "in good standing". Why we allow such blatant bribery is another question.
- dangus 10mo agoThe part I don’t fully understand is: could this non-acquisition eventually make the deal less than ideal for Nvidia? Is it really a given that GroqCloud is going to be sunset and the company will die? Couldn’t this company hire talent and continue to operate and maybe even innovate? Couldn’t Groq even hire back some employees from Nvidia? If any of them live in California there’s nothing stopping them and they have a bunch of cash from Nvidia. There are all kinds of loopholes for that like contracting arrangements. Nvidia doesn’t really have exclusive access to any part of the company. They didn’t necessarily remove a competitor, though I’ll grant that they likely did in practice. It’s potentially possible that the regulations did their job and kept a competitor on the market, though again I imagine this is my naevity speaking and that the most likely outcome is that Groq will wither. I also don’t fully understand if the Saudis are getting cashed out or not. Are they really going to roll over and allow their Saudi AI data center to become worthless? I would think they have a lot of motivation after this deal to make sure Groq still operates and serves their goals.
- krupan 10mo agoI agree, TFA seems to make a lot of assumptions. I kinda think they are correct just because they support the narrative that everyone involved is carefully taking care of their own, but it sure seems like it could go other ways.
- krupan 10mo agoRead the article and where it talks about accelerated vesting of Groq shares for both the leadership team that goes to Nvidia and the regular employees that stay at Groq. Is that even guaranteed? It's not an IPO or an acquisition, so why would vesting schedules change?
- ossa-ma 10mo agoVery interesting would love to read about this, do you have a link to the article?
- wmf 10mo agoI would assume there's no accelerated vesting but there's also nothing stopping Nvidia from issuing refreshers of equal value to unvested options. That's been a common recruiting tactic for a long time.
- kccqzy 10mo ago> The "non-exclusive" label is legal fiction. When you acquire all the IP and hire everyone who knows how to use it, exclusivity doesn't matter. I have some doubts about this point. IP is IP, independent of the people who invented it. If a different hardware company were to also pay for a non-exclusive IP license, maybe it will just take a few months to catch up. It’s like inheriting a codebase written by another team, and there will be some pain and some time needed to integrate it. In fact if GroqCloud wishes to survive, it should very well just attract licensees for its IP and collect license fees for the foreseeable future.
- Havoc 10mo agoI wonder how much of the cap table knew Matthew Berman (youtuber) mentioned he's invested in groq and found out same time as everyone else. Guessing he's a small/indirect investor but still telling
- spiantino 10mo agoI don't think you can treat owners of the same shares differently in the way this is suggesting. The VC shareholders and the employee shareholders are probably on equal footing and getting the same price. VCs will own preferred but I doubt that is enough to windfall them at the expense of the common shareholders. So if VCs are getting paid a certain share price, employees with vested stock almost certainly are getting the same price. And probably employees with vested options can either exercise now or will just get paid the net during the transaction. Yes, the company is probably doomed so people staying there are not doing well, but they also just got paid a 3x premium on their vested equity.
- Salman23 10mo agoYes I think you are right here. The purchase price is high enough for all parties to be get return on their shares, and whilst there will be a waterfall for who gets paid first, I doubt many people will be unhappy with this deal. Unlike Windsurf... who's 2nd employee only got 1% of what their shares were worth (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44673296 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44673296)
- lumost 10mo agoDoesn’t this depend on how the ip was structured? If it was kept as a separate entity, or the firm named ownership of the ip in nonstandard terms, then they could pay investors but not employees. Unfortunately, we could likely find thousands of different ways not to pay employees given they don’t have board seats, and are typically on non standard equity.
- Salman23 10mo agoDefinitely agreed that there exist thousands of different ways to not pay employees... but they don't have good incentive to cut them out. Purely from a social contract lens, why would founders actively seek out ways to cut out their employees from a (potentially life changing) exit.
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- cubefox 10mo ago> Most production AI applications aren't running 405B models. They're running 7B-70B models that need low latency and high throughput. Really? At least for LLMs, most actual usage is concentrated on huge SOTA models. 1 trillion parameters or more. And LLMs seem to be the lion's share of AI compute demand.
- pton_xd 10mo agoSo I guess this talent hire + tech license is the new way to acquire startups? Chatacter.ai, Windsurf, and now Groq. Any employees of those companies lurking here? I'm curious how the morale is now.
- monkeydust 10mo agoAlso worth thinking a about the private equity market scene, groq was afaik tradable be it thinn liquidity on platforms like equityzen. What did those shareholders get?
- putlake 10mo agoI'm one of those shareholders. No word from anyone so far.
- grensley 10mo agoA la carte in AI is going to be the name of the game for a couple reasons: - Avoids regulatory scrutiny (for now at least) - Nobody is actually entrenched enough for customers to matter - Weird "celebrity" culture in tech, and AI especially. Everyone is looking for a "whisperer" or a "godfather" or whatever. - Investors still get paid out Smart operational talent will probably adapt by demanding higher salary, signing bonuses, severance packages in lieu of equity. Distribution of the true "lottery tickets" will get more uneven.
- atif089 10mo ago> GroqCloud will wind down over 12-18 months. They'll either get laid off or jump ship to wherever they can land. They built the LPU architecture, contributed to the compiler stack, supported the infrastructure, and got nothing while Chamath made $2B. This is depressing.
- bilbo0s 10mo agoThat’s just it. We’ve entered a new era. Big companies don’t need your startup. They only need your smart guys. Just those few guys. You keep the rest of your engineers and figure out what to do with them. And lately, the answer has been, “wind it all down”. This sucks so bad for most of their employees. But it’s a signal to the labor market: Be very honest about what you are when you’re considering working at an AI startup. Are you an AI expert? Or a TF/Pytorch monkey? There’s an enormous difference between those two things. If you’re not the key guy, require a good salary up front. Because I don’t see a future where the “acquiring” companies start needing you as well.
- stefan_ 10mo agoNvidia didn't buy Groq because they need any "smart guys" at all.
- MrGilbert 10mo ago> But it’s a signal to the labor market: Or... Maybe we should start to think about how we let corporations get bigger and bigger? What happens if an entity (read: company) becomes so valuable, that it is basically indestructible? Does it have the power to change politics to their discretion? And as such, also influence the legislative? I find that highly concerning.
- Draiken 10mo agoYou mean like Google/Apple/Meta already are? I don't see how we're not already there. There's no competition, only an oligopoly splitting their spoils.
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- CalChris 10mo agoWhat is keeping Google/Amazon/Microsoft from licensing Groq’s tech? Sans people to be sure but at substantially reduced price. The Groq Cloud people should owe no allegiance to Ross. BTW, the FA says Nvidia bought the patents. That’s probably an overstatement. Grow said non-exclusive licensing and Nvidia hasn’t said anything. I think Nvidia licensed the IP and ‘bought’ (handcuffed) the people.
- rynn 10mo ago>What is keeping Google/Amazon/Microsoft from licensing Groq’s tech? Nothing, but they likely can't implement it as well as they could had they bought Groq first.
- LogicFailsMe 10mo ago[flagged]
- anita_ 10mo ago[dead]
- dang 10mo agoRelated: Nvidia to buy assets from Groq for $20B cash - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46379183 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46379183 - Dec 2025 (400 comments) Nvidia just paid $20B for a company that missed its revenue target by 75% - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46403041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46403041 - Dec 2025 (133 comments)
- esaym 10mo ago>Timing it for Christmas Eve ensures minimal media scrutiny of these connections. Sounds like the media is truly the one in charge.
- jandrese 10mo agonVidia's big problem right now is they have more money than they can productively spend and are way down the stupid money hole just looking for any kind of return. This is a failure of capitalism.
- FL33TW00D 10mo agoMr Kwok already analysed these deals and gave them a nice little acronym: HALO https://kwokchain.com/2025/07/15/the-halo-effect/ https://kwokchain.com/2025/07/15/the-halo-effect/
- pjb88 10mo agoSo... What will the actual impact on groq services be? I'm a fan, and I use Groq a lot for systems I build. I think they offer something different to most other providers (cheaper, faster, and until recently "we don't store your data by default") and it will be sad to see that fade.
- wmf 10mo agoIt's going to be the same. It may never get better though.
- whatevertrevor 10mo ago> Groq built the region's largest inference cluster in eight days in December 2024. From that Dammam facility, GroqCloud serves "nearly four billion people regionally adjacent to the KSA." This isn't API access. This is critical AI infrastructure for a nation-state, funded by the Public Investment Fund, processing inference workloads at national scale. Maybe I'm just completely out of touch, and hardware has never been my expertise, but does it take O(days) and not O(years) to build data centers these days? I know Grok DCs in Memphis were built under a year cutting many corners and using plenty loopholes, but even by those standards, bringing up a full data center in just over a week sounds impossible without some insane construction automation to me.
- lumost 10mo agothey are likely referring to their hardware deployment. Which can be done in days. The datacenter is owned and operated by someone else and they just bring in the racks.
- tw04 10mo agoPhysically building a datacenter yes. Repurposing a crypto datacenter for a new purpose, no. But days is hyperbolic no matter how you look at it unless they’re reusing ALL the existing infrastructure (network/security/hvac/physical server racks/some amount of compute). And aren’t actually including the time to procure the inferencing chips. You can call up Cisco tomorrow and offer them a billion dollars to get you an entire datacenter worth of switches tomorrow and the answer is going to be no because they just don’t keep that much inventory sitting around. That’s why covid was such a shitshow. I should give a caveat of: they could in theory redirect existing orders to you but would likely be violating contractual obligations and risk a lawsuit from the fortune 500 Peter they robbed to pay you Mr. Paul.
- whatevertrevor 10mo ago"Smart" accounting by not counting design, planning, procurement timelines would explain it, that makes sense. If that's the case, it's saddening to see details like this hyped up to borderline fraudulent levels.
- chongli 10mo agoI'd like to call back to yesterday's discussion on IP law [1] sparked by recent comments from Rob Pike. There was a major thread on the issue of regulatory regimes and the dysfunction that can arise. How is this acquisition not a textbook example of said dysfunction? This non-acquisition acquisition does not happen at all in a world without IP law. I think we're seeing a culmination of the dysfunction that results from IP law. The sheer amount of capital has given unbelievable momentum to the forces of consolidation. I still can't foresee the endgame (who can?) but it's even harder to see how it'll turn out well. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46396075 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46396075
- paxys 10mo agoThis has nothing to do with antitrust. Not like the current administration is going to enforce it anyways. Nvidia simply wants Groq’s tech and leadership without the burden of 500+ employees.
- SilverElfin 10mo agoNvidia should still pay the 500+ employees their due, based on their percentage of ownership.
- g947o 10mo ago"should" or "will"?
- SilverElfin 10mo agoShould, but won’t I am guessing
- lizknope 10mo agoI've posted this in many threads about startups. I have worked at 2 and had bad experiences at both. Why didn't I get any money from my startup? - A guide to Liquidation Preferences and Cap Table https://old.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/a8f6xz/why_didnt_i_get_any_money_from_my_startup_a_guide/ https://old.reddit.com/r/startups/comments/a8f6xz/why_didnt_... I have told people that before they join a startup ask about the liquidation preferences and cap table. If the ownership doesn't tell you then consider that a red flag. I would add this new Groq scenario to the list of questions to ask. "Can you and the executive team go to another company with the IP leaving the employees behind with stock worth $0?" Maybe phrase it better than that but I know a few former coworkers at Groq. I didn't know them well but this probably stinks for them.
- danaris 10mo agoOf course it has to do with antitrust. In an America with robust, sane antitrust, first of all, a company as big as Nvidia probably never exists in the first place. Second of all, if it does, an "acquihire" like this will have to pass regulatory muster, regardless of whether it's a full-on corporate acquisition. Because in an America with robust, sane antitrust, if a company as big as Nvidia does exist, it is operating under fairly tight strictures as a company with heavy market dominance. It does not get to just act like any other company. That's what antitrust law is for.
- camillomiller 10mo agoThe chatgpt-ism and the gpt section headlines make this piece immediately unreadable. Why do you outsource your own blog’s thoughts to a machine? Terrible.
- jbs789 10mo agoFeels like a frenzy! To me, the willingness to spend 20bn for a different architecture speaks to the competition in the market, across the big players, which doesn’t seem to be factored into their valuations.
- peter_d_sherman 10mo ago>"The question isn't just why Nvidia paid $13.1B more than market rate for technology they could build themselves (they have the PDK, volume, talent, infrastructure, and cash). The question is why they structured it this way. Where the premium was spent: Regulatory arbitrage: Non-exclusive licensing avoids years of antitrust review. Structure the deal as IP licensing + talent acquisition, and regulators have no grounds to block it. This alone is worth billions in time and certainty." Isn't that fascinating! Observation: For any given Deal (in business or in life in general) -- there may be one or more legal components -- to it... But (equal-and-oppositely!) there also may NOT be one or more legal components to it! What each deal has in some legal components -- it may lack in other legal components... Conversely, what each deal does not have in some legal components -- it may have in other legal components... Now, perhaps this may sound like a "self-evident truth", and as such, apparently may not be worthy of a deeper exploration, but it seems that there exists an: Intersection of Set Theory and Legal Aspects -- applied to Deals (AKA "Transactions", "Exchanges", "Barters", "Trades", "Exchanges Of Value", etc., etc.) in various jurisdictions (which can be thought about as how contracts, both legal and natural, arising from such exchanges are, or would be interpreted through its courts, through its regional statutes (aka "Laws") IF there are inter-party disputes which subsequently require a court for such interpretation...) And that intersection -- could well be worthy of further study! Phrased another way -- it (and this article!) are highly interesting from a legal perspective! (And also a Set Theory / Set Theoretical one!)
- moralestapia 10mo ago>And 10x better energy efficiency because you're not constantly moving data across a memory bus. Moving data is not that expensive, many times there's no overhead over the nominal consumption of your system. The rest of the article is spot on, though.
- tzahifadida 10mo agoGreat read. Thanks.
- c-c-c-c-c 10mo agothis entire article is seemingly written by an LLM
- MallocVoidstar 10mo agoI'm going to assume this is a predominantly AI-written article since for some reason it's talking about GroqCloud serving Llama 2, which they don't. It claims they serve Llama 2 7B @ 750 tokens/s with 2K context, but over on OpenRouter Groq is listed as serving Llama 3.1 8B @ 1300 tokens/s with 128K context. (And the official GroqCloud site says 840 tokens/s.)
- aiisahik 10mo agoThe analysis here is excellent. However, Groq's success was not obvious or straight forward. It require huge amounts of investment to keep it alive for many years long before any real positive cashflow. It was on its death bed for years before the ChatGPT moment in 2023. It has been over 9 years since its founding. If you know anything about VC funds and exit timelines, you will know that investors in Groq needed an exit by this time. I'm happy that the investors and founders got a long and well deserved exit. I'm happy that the tech here will continue to see development and investment under Nvidia so we may one day get to use Claude Opus at 500 tokens per second. Does it suck that certain employees got screwed over? Yes. Does this happen ALL THE TIME in startups? More often than you think. The expected value for employee options for this type of company is very very close to zero. Anyone who thinks otherwise is lying to themselves. Does it suck that it didn't happen via a normal M&A process? As someone who used to work on tech M&As as an attorney, I would be first one to say that I hope this DOES become the norm. M&A sucks for the employees, the investors, the founders, the acquirers - it sucks for EVERYONE. The only people who it doesn't suck for are the lawyers and bankers who earn more fees the more complex and longer the process is. Best M&A I ever witnessed was the FB acquisition of Instagram that happened over the weekend (my old law firm was part of that deal). Ask yourself: do you want to spend 2% of your funding round and 2 months on lawyers when you raise a $5m Series A? Then why do you want to do the same when you exit?
- bushlay 10mo ago[dead]
- peteforde 10mo agoI actually managed to find video of Jonathan Ross discussing how GroqCloud was moving forward with Simon Edwards. It puts everything in proper perspective: https://youtu.be/rurhk1hadp8?si=pnKrF7w48NhChK2r&t=253 https://youtu.be/rurhk1hadp8?si=pnKrF7w48NhChK2r&t=253
- ossa-ma 10mo agoLMAO you got me
- moezd 10mo agoThat's why we can't have nice things.
- poplarsol 10mo ago[flagged]
- acedTrex 10mo agoThat is the entire point of the FTC. To decide what actions are fair to the free market and enforce it. You can disagree with khans take on it but it is the stated purpose of the FTC to dictate that.
- Mikho 9mo agoThat kind of M&A shenanigan without actual M&A to not attract scrutinization is pretty popular this year. E.g., Meta's "acquisition" of ScaleAI for $14.8 billion and Alphabet's "reverse acquihire" of key talent from Windsurf in July 2025 for $2.4 billion for non-exclusive technology licensing rights and the hiring of top executives. Apparently, in all deals employees lost while founders gained personally but didn't explicitly try to make good for people who actually took a risk by trusting them. That really diminishes attractiveness of working in a startup where all your efforts could be swooped out by a big player via just buying IP and acquihiring founders for a price cheaper than buying the whole company and without the hustle of regulatory scrutiny. Big tech literally kills competition and innovation guaranteeing its monopoly.
- cmxch 9mo agoClose the loophole, grill Nvidia anyway.