The FTC requested significant increases for technology and economic analysis for FY2025 ($535M), but was given a static budget with plans to cut by 11%. FTC chair Ferguson reduced staff from 1,315 to 1,221 and aims to reach around 1,100 through attrition to align with lower budgets.
I know no one wants to hear this, but this “acquisition “ is nothing of the kind. It’s just Nvidia hiring the four or five guys they need without having to take on the rest of groq. Which, as it turns out, is worthless without those four or five guys.
This is what happens when companies figure out they don’t have to buy out other companies. They just need to pay off shareholders for the right to hire key employees. Which is convenient, since the key four or five guys are usually pretty big shareholders.
It’s no longer necessary to monopolize a market. You can monopolize intellectual capital by just paying ungodly sums of money. The rest will take care of itself.
"Davis, whose firm has invested more than half a billion dollars in Groq since the company was founded in 2016, said the deal came together quickly. Groq raised $750 million at a valuation of about $6.9 billion three months ago. Investors in the round included Blackrock and Neuberger Berman, as well as Samsung, Cisco
, Altimeter and 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. is a partner."
POP QUIZ - Which minority partner is the key here?
> It's a shame. Groq was really great. Nvidia is stifling innovation here.
I don't share your view. Groq continues to exist. Nvidia did not take any or their hardware, so the same Groq you access on OpenRouter will exist tomorrow or one year from now. If anything, they'll significantly increase their presence, since they just got $20 billion in cash.
As for Nvidia stifling innovation: one can argue that they do the opposite. They hired key personnel from Groq (including their founder and CEO, Jonnathan Ross). These people agreed to the move, presumably for the money, but most likely also because they think they can deliver even more if they have access to Nvidia's resources. So, in terms of overall innovation, it will most likely go up.
But you can say that they stifle independent innovation. Maybe, but the case for that is not that open and shut as it might seem. They entered a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Groq. Which means Groq can provide their "secret sauce" to other interested entities, maybe Apple, maybe Intel or AMD, maybe OpenAI, maybe Oracle. The number of companies who could be interested in their tech is quite high.
Or simply, Groq, with the many billions in unencumbered cash they just received will decide to go for version 2.0 of their tech, or they can significantly expand the GroqCloud. Their valuation just went from $6.5B to significantly higher than $20B. They can pursue an IPO, or they can issue debt. There are countless possibilities for Groq now.
You are stating this as a fact. Do you have any links?
Otherwise, the simplest interpretation is that the $20B is paid by Nvidia to Groq, the company, not the investors. I don't even think it is legally possible for Nvidia to do a deal with Groq's investors directly, rather than with Groq.
Is that your opinion, or you have some more solid source to state that?
Because your argument sounds something like this: Nvidia did something (a fact), and I am sure that after that Groq will do something else (not a fact), therefore Nvidia is such a bad player. Do you consider this to be a correct argument?
The Axios article is reporting on a scoop, quite breathlessly. But read it more carefully.
All the employees who jumped ship (90%) had to be bought out, otherwise they would have a conflict of interests. The schedule is quite irrelevant. The remaining 10% also got cash. But the article is quite mum on the institutional investors. They can choose to cash out, or to keep the business running. Now that they have a lot of cash, they can choose to expand GroqCloud, or they can choose to pretend to keep the business running, just for show, to not trigger regulatory scrutiny. To claim it’s the second means you are quite confident the regulators in this administration will do their job. And prosecute Nvidia. Are you really saying that?
> I don't share your view. Groq continues to exist. Nvidia did not take any or their hardware, so the same Groq you access on OpenRouter will exist tomorrow or one year from now. If anything, they'll significantly increase their presence, since they just got $20 billion in cash.
The linked article expects differently:
> Nvidia’s buying them with their insanely inflated war chest. They don’t want a chunk taken out of their market share. They can’t afford to take that chance. So it’s like they’re just saying: “Shut up, take the $20 billion, walk away from this project.”
How much this is true I can't really verify myself but it certainly sounds concerning.
> But you can say that they stifle independent innovation.
But this is exactly what a market watchdog is supposed to prevent. A market with one player (or two) is no market. And Groq was going in a decidedly different direction than Nvidia.
The linked article echoes my worries in other ways as well e.g. worker displacement, explosion of energy usage. I often equate it with the dotcom era, I worked on this thinking we made the world better. But the endgame, with the Google, Meta, pervasive tracking etc is much more dystopian. Especially considering the societal effects. Enshittification, corporate rule, polarisation due to social medias promoting "engagement" and thus conflicting content that get people riled up.
I don't want the same to happen with AI here and it feels like they are already aligning the stars to make exactly that happen.
Funny how everyone shits on Nvidia's monopoly when we've got Google walking around after winning a monumental antitrust case regarding their Android/Chrome/Google information monopoly.
> Funny how everyone shits on Nvidia's monopoly when we've got Google walking around after winning a monumental antitrust case regarding their Android/Chrome/Google information monopoly.
... are you implying people around here don't give google flak for monopolistic business practices? That doesn't square with my experience, here.
