[HN Gopher] Nvidia to Acquire Run:AI
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Nvidia to Acquire Run:AI
        
       Author : jmsflknr
       Score  : 159 points
       Date   : 2024-04-24 13:36 UTC (9 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (blogs.nvidia.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (blogs.nvidia.com)
        
       | blackhawkC17 wrote:
       | Can someone explain how or why Israeli startups have historically
       | punched above their weight?
       | 
       | For such a small country, they keep churning out tons of
       | successful companies that get acquired by larger American and
       | European counterparts.
       | 
       | I'm suspecting high levels of education plus a culture that
       | encourages entrepreneurship and risk-taking, but there might be
       | more to the story..
        
         | tomrod wrote:
         | My assumption is all of the above, as well as well connected
         | folks through world class educational institutions, and a
         | generally practical environment.
        
         | TheMrZZ wrote:
         | I suspect having a 10M population "only" + very bad commercial
         | relations with their direct neighbours make Israeli startups
         | think global from scratch. In Europe, most startups tend to
         | think local-first, which hinders their scaling.
        
         | dagmx wrote:
         | Mandatory military service with a military that has a high
         | weight on technical warfare/superiority is an oft given reason.
         | 
         | Another is network effect. The same way that Silicon Valley has
         | a lot of very successful startups. Once you have a few in a
         | region, it creates a knock on effect.
         | 
         | It inspires people to follow suite. It means there's more money
         | being pushed around in that area. It means there's more people
         | looking at developments in that area. Often someone may be
         | lower down in one successful startup and then leave to make
         | their own with the experience of how to do it.
        
           | shmatt wrote:
           | I haven't researched deeply but there are plenty of Israeli
           | startup exits with executives coming from combat, non tech
           | units. Usually elite combat units that are harder to get in
           | to.
           | 
           | There is something to be said about spending 18-21 in the
           | military, there is pretty much 0 partying during college
           | (that is done during military vacations + the gap year
           | between military and college). By the time you've finished
           | your Bachelors degree you're 25-26 and ready to settle down.
           | You hit your full time job life 6-8 years after high school.
           | Its a very different mindset
           | 
           | I look at the 22 year olds moving to NYC after college for
           | their first job, and there is such a huge difference in what
           | they're looking for in their day to day lives. Their job is
           | probably the last thing they are about
        
         | John23832 wrote:
         | Through the Israeli military service there is a large pipeline
         | of (technical acumen cultivated while serving) -> (business ||
         | academia). Especially in technology. A large part of this is
         | comes from the fact that Israel strives to be self sufficient
         | when it comes to military technology.
         | 
         | When it comes to deals, there is also, frankly, a large Jewish
         | funding/investing community. The hard part of getting deals is
         | who you know.
        
         | shmatt wrote:
         | There is also a work culture of both putting in as many hours
         | as necessary, but also very goal oriented and understanding
         | whats critical to deliver and what sint
         | 
         | There are obviously many more countries that make the average
         | American or European tech worker seem lazy, but for some of
         | them working a 60-80 hour week is about showing you're working
         | rather than doing important work
         | 
         | From my experience its not strictly the hours put in per week
         | driving Israeli startups, but actually delivering what
         | customers are asking for. I've been in many calls where the
         | executives promised a complex feature that hasn't even been
         | planned yet be delivered very soon, and somehow the team is
         | able to complete it with careful planning and prioritizing (and
         | putting in the hours)
         | 
         | The executives dont shy away from the grind either, im now on
         | the other side (US corporate) and Israeli startup CEO/CTOs are
         | basically available for every concern I have 24/7, even when I
         | dont expect them to answer they do
        
           | okdood64 wrote:
           | +1 In my previous stint, I had worked with Spot
           | (https://spot.io/) as one of our vendors. Absolutely great
           | product, amazing customer support and ability to take feature
           | requests, or otherwise address our pain points quickly and
           | effectively.
        
           | fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
           | > even when I dont expect them to answer they do
           | 
           | I have also experienced this. Given Israel is the opposite
           | side of the world from California, mainly I expect if I ask a
           | question in the afternoon there will be an answer ready in
           | the morning. But surprisingly often, they answer immediately.
        
             | jedberg wrote:
             | Many Israelis in tech worked shifted hours to line up with
             | the USA better, because either their customers or coworkers
             | are in the USA.
        
               | falcor84 wrote:
               | I would also assume it might be a good circadian fit for
               | many, given the prevalence of "night owls" in tech
        
               | edanm wrote:
               | Some do, not all.
               | 
               | The harder problem is actually that the work week is Sun-
               | Fri instead of Mon-Sun, which means there's days when
               | people just aren't working. This is also sometimes a good
               | thing though - Israelis will have put in a full day of
               | work while everyone else was out for the weekend.
        
         | treprinum wrote:
         | Easy access to large VC companies in the US, networking
         | effects.
        
         | trashtester wrote:
         | The same demographic is punching even more above their weight
         | in the US.
         | 
         | Probably by a pretty large margin, too.
        
         | j7ake wrote:
         | It's not only start ups, but also academia.
         | 
         | Weizmann institute of science is the envy of the world in terms
         | of their research output, and widely used as a model for new
         | research institutes to aspire to.
        
         | pclmulqdq wrote:
         | If you google "Unit 8200" that is pretty much the reason. The
         | Israeli military pushes their super-smart kids together to be
         | computer scientists and hackers for 2 years - this is
         | essentially the NSA of Israel. Behind every Israeli tech
         | company is a small cadre of unit 8200 grads.
         | 
         | When they finish, a huge network of Unit 8200 alumni who are
         | already rich have a shared experience with these kids, and are
         | ready to invest in any idea these kids have. They have a tight-
         | knit group of incredibly smart colleagues as well, from their
         | time in the military.
        
           | yoavm wrote:
           | > Behind every Israeli tech company is a small cadre of unit
           | 8200 grads.
           | 
           | This is of course greatly exaggerated. I know plenty of
           | Israeli startups that never had 8200 grads in them, mine
           | included. I actually think that the role of a specific army
           | unit in creating the environment that fosters these startups
           | is really hyped. It's much more of a cultural thing than some
           | random army unit.
        
             | pclmulqdq wrote:
             | Plenty of communities have cultures of entrepreneurship and
             | hard work, though.
        
             | flakeoil wrote:
             | Overall military spending can explain a lot as well. A lot
             | of military spending goes to existing companies as well as
             | startups to develop weapons and defence systems which
             | drives innovation in high-tech technology.
             | 
             | Israel spends 5.3% of their GDP on military. That's more
             | than almost any other country in the world and they have
             | spent a lot for many decades.
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highes
             | t...
        
               | jolj wrote:
               | I don't think the Israeli defense budget really goes into
               | Israeli startups. The only related fields are drone
               | startups and cyber startups that hardly sell domestically
        
           | taneq wrote:
           | I'm eternally confused as to why other countries don't do
           | this. The Manhattan Project resulted in so many great minds,
           | purely due to the cross-pollination of all those geniuses in
           | such a small place. You'd think any nation state would be
           | gunning for the same advantage.
        
             | pclmulqdq wrote:
             | Manhattan projects don't really work unless you feel that
             | you are under existential threat.
             | 
             | Israelis perpetually do.
        
             | psunavy03 wrote:
             | Look at all the protests going on at places like Google.
             | There's a segment of the population, especially in tech,
             | that is irrationally anti-military. Somehow people think if
             | we all held hands and sang Kumbaya, all the evil wars would
             | stop, as if people like Vladimir Putin didn't exist.
        
               | lapphi wrote:
               | Think the idea here is that the US supplies the weapons
               | for those wars and we should stop doing that.
        
               | psunavy03 wrote:
               | Which is a clueless idea, but it's an idea. The US
               | refusing to supply weapons would have, if anything,
               | encouraged Putin to be even more genocidal.
        
             | dotnet00 wrote:
             | The US does kind of do this through its national labs. They
             | just don't have the thriller-esque story of the Manhattan
             | project to romanticize things and aren't wasting their
             | intellect on maximizing doomscrolling.
        
           | dannylandau wrote:
           | I think it is more than 5 years on average. Here is the
           | answer to prompt from Meta.ai below: Unit 8200 is an elite
           | intelligence unit of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and the
           | length of service for new recruits can vary depending on
           | their role and position. Typically, new recruits in Unit 8200
           | serve for a minimum of 4-5 years, but some may serve longer
           | depending on their specialization and the needs of the unit.
           | Some roles may require even longer service commitments, up to
           | 6-8 years or more. It's worth noting that Unit 820psilon is
           | considered one of the most prestigious and competitive units
           | in the IDF, and service there is highly sought after by many
           | young Israelis. The unit is responsible for military
           | intelligence gathering, signal intelligence, and
           | cybersecurity, among other things.
        
           | myth_drannon wrote:
           | Even if the startup's founder is from 8200, the rest are not.
           | I knew one of the execs and the person is very smart. It's
           | just the culture that promotes intelligence. At least in
           | Canada/US there is less emphasis on intelligence and you can
           | see it on the VP level that they are more business-oriented
           | and not necessarily the smartest person in the room, which is
           | fine if you are in North America.
        
         | MrBuddyCasino wrote:
         | > _I'm suspecting high levels of education plus a culture that
         | encourages entrepreneurship and risk-taking, but there might be
         | more to the story.._
         | 
         | I sincerely hope this is bait, because the answer is obvious.
        
           | I_ wrote:
           | Which is?
           | 
           | (I am genuinely asking)
        
             | throw310822 wrote:
             | Jews have a higher proportion of very smart people than
             | other ethnicities. It's something that is "complicated" to
             | talk about (we don't like all the implications of such a
             | possibility), but it's pretty much indisputable.
        
               | N0b8ez wrote:
               | Hitler infamously condemned the IQ system for being
               | "jewish". I don't think that sentiment has gone away.
        
               | trashtester wrote:
               | Usually it's the far left that use the
               | oppressor/oppressed way of thinking to demonize their
               | enemies. But when it comes to Jews, Nazis and many other
               | extreme right wingers do the same.
               | 
               | Hitler saw the Jews as an existential threat, not as
               | objectively inferior to "Aryans". In fact, this is why he
               | hated them so much above anyone else; he thought that
               | they were the only "Race" that had the potential to out-
               | compete his "Aryans".
        
               | throw310822 wrote:
               | > Hitler saw the Jews ... not as objectively inferior to
               | "Aryans". ... he thought that they were the only "Race"
               | that had the potential to out-compete his "Aryans"
               | 
               | We're veering terribly off topic, but I'm pretty sure
               | this is not historically true.
        
               | trashtester wrote:
               | That was my take when I read his section about Jews in
               | Mein Kampf.
        
               | ActorNightly wrote:
               | You dont need intelligence to have a startup that
               | succeeds. I bet that within this thread, there are users
               | who have ideas that can become mutltimillion companies.
               | All it would take is someone who knows how to navigate
               | the business space to set up funding and talk to the
               | right people in the right way to make sales.
               | 
               | Success in startup space is more about motivation in
               | terms of pushing harder than others, and support system
               | that gives you a higher chance to make correct decisions.
        
               | throw310822 wrote:
               | > You dont need intelligence to have a startup that
               | succeeds
               | 
               | Not necessarily genius-level but being smart I'm sure
               | helps. You might not _need_ it, in the sense that there
               | certainly are counter-examples, but yeah, on the big
               | numbers it 's pretty obvious that it's an advantage.
        
         | underdeserver wrote:
         | There's "Startup Nation" by Senor and Singer with a thesis on
         | this.
         | 
         | My personal opinion is huge talent density, a just-get-it-done
         | attitude, strong network effects from military service and a
         | small number of universities, and a lot of startup experience
         | across the board - if you're an entrepreneur in Tel Aviv, it's
         | relatively easy to find people who've done it before multiple
         | times, and they'll give you good advice.
        
         | htrp wrote:
         | Israel is also small enough that almost everyone is 1-2 degrees
         | away from a top tier vc
        
         | CSMastermind wrote:
         | This touches on some potentially sensitive topics but at least
         | some of the success is explained by having a population with,
         | on average, the second highest IQs.
         | 
         | Another part of it is definitely the benefits from having a
         | strong high-trust culture that gives them access to social
         | networks and a priority to provide for the group as a whole not
         | just their own personal interests.
        
           | trashtester wrote:
           | If we look at IQ as an explanation, it's not only about the
           | mean, but also about the variance, which is driven up by the
           | Ashkenazi sub-population.
           | 
           | I would not be surprised if Israel has a significantly larger
           | percentage of people with IQ>140 than any other nation.
        
           | myth_drannon wrote:
           | There is a very large percentage of population that doesn't
           | participate in the economy and is largely uneducated. So it's
           | even more shocking to see Israel so successful. And of
           | course, you have the huge wave of immigration from the former
           | USSR in the 90's. Sadly I'm very pessimistic about the future
           | of Israel and the demographics are against it.
        
             | jolj wrote:
             | The demographics are against the entire western world
             | 
             | however i wouldn't get too caught up with extrapolations,
             | they are usually wrong (see population bomb)
        
         | m3kw9 wrote:
         | The govt is westernized and allow relatively more freedom of
         | thought than other nations. So the situation is similar to
         | America. Plus Israel is always been focused on tech because
         | they know they need leverage to defend itself as a small
         | country surrounded by adversaries
        
         | belter wrote:
         | Nvidia has R&D operations in Israel for several years. Are any
         | of the employees from Run:AI ex-NVIDIA?
        
         | 0xcde4c3db wrote:
         | I'm no economic historian and don't know where the relevant
         | figures would be for Israel, but having skimmed some history of
         | South Korea and Taiwan I get the impression that when a small
         | country overperforms like this it usually involves a
         | combination of generous domestic subsidies/incentives and a
         | massive influx of foreign capital, which can come in numerous
         | forms including technology transfer. Having a diaspora in more
         | developed countries probably doesn't hurt a country's chances
         | either (see e.g. Morris Chang).
        
           | trashtester wrote:
           | The thing is, Jews tend to overperform even more outside of
           | Israel. From Wikipedia:
           | 
           |  _Of the 965 individual recipients of the Nobel Prize and the
           | Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences between 1901 and
           | 2023,[1] at least 214 have been Jews or people with at least
           | one Jewish parent, representing 22% of all recipients. For
           | comparison, 65.4% of Nobel prize winners were either
           | Christians or had a Christian background. Jews comprise only
           | 0.2% of the world 's population, meaning their share of
           | winners is 110 times their proportion of the world's
           | population._
           | 
           | [1]
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates
        
             | VS1999 wrote:
             | Unless they're somehow 110 times better than everyone else,
             | this indicates some powerful nepotism.
        
               | trashtester wrote:
               | That's the oppressor/oppressed narrative for any such
               | difference. Hitler came to the same conclusion, and
               | decided to do something about it. Various communists
               | revolutionaries have used the same kind of thinking to
               | get rid of the ruling classes in their countries after
               | the revolution.
               | 
               | But if you consider it this way: The Nobel price was
               | given mostly to white people (including Jews) until about
               | 1970. That's a factor of 10 already.
               | 
               | Then you consider that Ashkenazi Jews have an average IQ
               | of about 115 vs other Europeans somewhere south of 100 on
               | average.
               | 
               | If the standard deviation is a constant 15, a population
               | with a mean of 100 has about 0.4% of the population with
               | an IQ >140. Increase the mean to 115, and that grows to
               | about 5%. That's another factor of 10. And the gap widens
               | as the threshold increases.
               | 
               | This seems to fit the 110x almost perfectly.
               | 
               | Disclaimer: I have no Jewish ancestry that I'm aware of.
               | 
               | Edit: Also, to my knowledge, the Nobel committee has NOT
               | been dominated by Jews.
        
               | meflou wrote:
               | 13% of the world population have an IQ higher than 117.
               | That means that there is a billion non jew that has an IQ
               | higher than the average Ashkenazi. Thus your arguments
               | makes no sense. Even if every single jewish person had a
               | high IQ, they will be less than 1% of the pool.
        
               | lapphi wrote:
               | The selection pool is not the global population, as
               | stated in the previous comment.
        
               | kaashif wrote:
               | Not true. The differences don't have to be that large.
               | 
               | If one person consistently runs 0.1s faster than everyone
               | else, they can win 100x the races of the next best person
               | without being 100x better.
               | 
               | Nobel prizes, like running races, are winner take all.
               | The person in 100th place doesn't get any points
               | proportional to how good their proposal is.
        
         | phone8675309 wrote:
         | When you've got the US fueling your war machine you tend to
         | have a lot of money left over to plow into tech dominance.
        
         | maratc wrote:
         | "Start up nation" does a good job exploring this topic. In
         | short, it's about never accepting authority and challenging
         | everything, the roots for that come from the culture and even
         | the religion.
        
         | xyzzy4747 wrote:
         | This may be controversial to some people here, but Israelis
         | have high IQs genetically and from good parenting. When you put
         | a bunch of determined high IQ people together they're going to
         | outperform.
        
         | xyst wrote:
         | Investment into their people. Proper support structures. Taking
         | advantage of their "country pride".
         | 
         | Same effect was seen in USA during the space race.
         | 
         | At some point USA just "gave up" and ceded all control to
         | private corporations which don't give a shit about the people
         | and only care about the bottom line
        
         | alephnerd wrote:
         | > I'm suspecting high levels of education
         | 
         | It's this plus being a small country. The entire population of
         | Israel is roughly the same as the Bay Area, so everyone is 2-3
         | degrees away from each other. This makes it easier to raise
         | capital and build a startup.
         | 
         | The success of Checkpoint and PANW kickstarted the scene.
        
         | jampekka wrote:
         | Probably a lot of money sloshing around the US-subsidized
         | military-industrial complex?
        
         | ActorNightly wrote:
         | The boring answer is that its simple community.
         | 
         | If you surround yourself by friends who all do that one thing
         | and are all driven to be good at that thing, you will be
         | motivated to do the same thing and get good at it, and motivate
         | other people in turn.
         | 
         | Silicon Valley used to be like this.
        
         | rchaud wrote:
         | > I'm suspecting high levels of education plus a culture that
         | encourages entrepreneurship and risk-taking
         | 
         | There's also the small matter of $200bn in US military
         | assistance since 1973, which involved significant knowledge
         | transfer across many different scientific and engineering
         | domains.
        
         | someotherperson wrote:
         | I've worked for two, both inside and outside Israel, and both
         | were very successful. The same thing happened both times.
         | 
         | 1. Foreign Jewish VCs pumped money into it, gave the founders
         | plenty of autonomy.
         | 
         | 2. The internal network of the founders to other successful
         | Jews was gigantic. Even if they're unimpressive themselves.
         | 
         | Essentially easy access to capital + domestic and international
         | network that can facilitate success. It's a nationalized
         | version of YC.
        
       | gk1 wrote:
       | This announcement doesn't mention a price, but the scoop by
       | Calcalist last week says "many hundreds of millions of dollars
       | and could even reach $1 billion." Good for them.
       | (https://www.calcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/rkmbe9e0p)
        
         | cheselnut wrote:
         | Techcrunch mentioned it was $700M
        
       | jmsflknr wrote:
       | Calcalist says the deal is valued at [$700 million](https://www.c
       | alcalistech.com/ctechnews/article/s1w2iniwa).
        
       | papichulo2023 wrote:
       | I was under the impresion that modern AI still runs mainly
       | baremetal. Isn't pytorch parallel distribute not good enough?
        
         | htrp wrote:
         | There are a ton of tricks you can do to share hbm/flops amongst
         | GPUs in a cluster.
        
         | chuckadams wrote:
         | You can use kubernetes to manage bare metal machines, but it
         | probably doesn't make much difference: once the bits are on the
         | GPU, I doubt a properly configured VM is getting in the way,
         | let alone containerd.
        
           | jfkfif wrote:
           | the problem is multinode runs that communicate through the
           | network
        
             | josh-sematic wrote:
             | Yes, which is especially important for training. Getting
             | good GPU interconnect can be really important for training
             | large models.
        
             | freeone3000 wrote:
             | Multinode runs _don't_ communicate through the network in a
             | DGX configuration. NVlink allows for RDMA over direct
             | infiniband. No need for network here.
        
               | tomoyoirl wrote:
               | Infiniband is a network too...
               | 
               | But even if we set that aside you'll get access to your
               | data over a network connection because these are
               | expensive nodes running batch jobs with finite disk
               | space, not personal workstations.
        
         | throw0101d wrote:
         | > _I was under the impresion that modern AI still runs mainly
         | baremetal._
         | 
         | Generally yes, but you can do (PCI) pass-through of GPUs to VMs
         | and containers and such, so it is not strictly necessary.
        
         | 0x457 wrote:
         | You can give GPU to VM and containers without any overhead
         | these days. However, Nvidia always placed roadblocks when you
         | aren't using their data center hardware in datacenters.
        
         | ipsum2 wrote:
         | This is purely a scheduler, it doesn't have any any effect on
         | the workload performance.
        
         | btian wrote:
         | nVidia Multi-Instance GPUs has been around for >4 years.
        
       | htrp wrote:
       | > Run:ai has developed an orchestration and virtualization
       | software layer tailored to the unique needs of AI workloads
       | running on GPUs and similar chipsets. Run:ai's Kubernetes-based
       | container platform for AI clouds efficiently pools and shares
       | GPUs by automatically assigning the necessary amount of computing
       | power - from fractions of GPUs, to multiple GPUs, to multiple
       | nodes of GPUs.
       | 
       | Basically Nvidia coming out with managed AI services on DGX cloud
        
         | belter wrote:
         | Apparently the DGX cloud is hosted first on Oracle, moving to
         | Azure and hosting on Google soon...
         | 
         | From 2023: https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-launches-
         | dgx-cloud...
         | 
         | "NVIDIA is partnering with leading cloud service providers to
         | host DGX Cloud infrastructure, starting with Oracle Cloud
         | Infrastructure (OCI). Its OCI Supercluster provides a purpose-
         | built RDMA network, bare-metal compute and high-performance
         | local and block storage that can scale to superclusters of over
         | 32,000 GPUs.
         | 
         | Microsoft Azure is expected to begin hosting DGX Cloud next
         | quarter, and the service will soon expand to Google Cloud and
         | more."
        
           | spicyusername wrote:
           | There are also self-hosted DGX Grace Blackwell systems
           | releasing later this year / next year.
        
           | htrp wrote:
           | DGX cloud is nvidia's cloud offering (you can think of it
           | like a snowflake/databricks in that it runs on top of other
           | clouds), with allegedly the reference design architectures vs
           | someone just slapping some H100s in a server rack.
        
         | sa-code wrote:
         | Run ai is not a mature product at this point though.
        
       | freedomben wrote:
       | I suppose we're now entering the era where Nvidia is so big and
       | wealthy that they will join the other kings (e.g. FAANG+) in
       | being acquisition machines. The contemporary regulatory
       | environment may make this an interesting thing to watch. I
       | suspect that they'll (by that I mean most tech companies) have to
       | get these acquisitions done earlier while the companies are even
       | smaller if they are to get past regulators.
        
         | imachine1980_ wrote:
         | i doubt NVIDIA main business have lots of differences, and this
         | acquisition make sense both as add on for their product
         | ecosystems (lock in) or too trying to pivot too cloud base
         | solution.
        
         | ethbr1 wrote:
         | Nvidia's footprint is more specific and obtuse than the other
         | FAANG+s, so I expect they'll have an easier time with
         | acquisition regulatory approval on the edges of their business
         | model.
         | 
         | If they wanted to acquire an ML chip company, sure, but
         | I/P/SaaS value adds will probably sail through.
        
         | linearrust wrote:
         | We are well into that era already. Nvidia tried to buy ARM from
         | softbank but was blocked by regulators a few years ago.
         | 
         | It's amazing that a company known for video game graphics cards
         | is now a $2 trillion company. Nvidia's market cap ( over 2
         | trillion ) is the 2nd biggest of the FAANG+. It's bigger than
         | Google. It's bigger than Amazon. Only Apple has a bigger market
         | cap. And most of nvidia's market cap gains has been in the past
         | year. It's unique for being the only predominantly hardware
         | company of the group.
        
           | twoodfin wrote:
           | I think Nvidia would argue their software is at least as
           | valuable to their market position as Apple's is.
        
           | lotsofpulp wrote:
           | Microsoft is missing from your list. And if Nvidia is
           | predominantly hardware, so is Apple.
        
             | Vvector wrote:
             | Nvidia is a software company that happens to make their own
             | chips. This has been their mantra for the last 15 years.
        
               | lotsofpulp wrote:
               | I thought they paid TSMC to make chips they design. Just
               | like Apple.
        
         | meekaaku wrote:
         | Nvidia is the actual N in FAANG. Netflix is not a technological
         | powerhouse compared to Nvidia
        
           | Rinzler89 wrote:
           | Netflix was included because they were a hypergrowth SV tech
           | stock, paying crazy compensations, not because it was a tech
           | powerhouse.
        
           | jedberg wrote:
           | When FAANG was created, Netflix was the highest gainer in the
           | S&P 500. FAANG was the highest growth stocks that year, and
           | nothing more.
        
           | 0x457 wrote:
           | Netflix is definitely a technological powerhouse, it just we,
           | mortals, can't benefit from it.
        
         | boringg wrote:
         | It makes sense from the perspective if they are buying with
         | equity. Their stock being at such heights its like getting a
         | huge discount on your purchases and it barely goes on the
         | balance sheet. The question always remains if the purchase was
         | worth it - always tbd.
        
         | bmacho wrote:
         | They tried to buy ARM, and usa, eu, gb and china both said no.
         | Lol poor nvidia. (I was so hyped for them, nvidia creating an
         | arm desktop platform, and samsung/qualcomm/mediatek going
         | against wintel, but that's not gonna happen now.)
        
         | mhuffman wrote:
         | I am expecting Groq acquisition or merger at some point. I just
         | makes sense. Especially considering the financial position of
         | Nvidia right now.
        
       | m3kw9 wrote:
       | This co facilitates efficient allocation of GPUs. I can almost
       | say it's like a hyper convergence service like Nutanix.
        
       | nightski wrote:
       | I am so tired of all these acquisitions. My personal opinion is
       | that it is ruining our economy.
        
         | jahewson wrote:
         | Care to explain how?
        
           | JohnFen wrote:
           | By reducing competition and diversity. Such acquisitions also
           | often (but not always) results in the worsening of the
           | products/services that the acquired company produces.
           | 
           | It's pretty difficult to come up with examples of
           | acquisitions or mergers that resulted in something positive
           | for the market and society at large.
        
             | smallmancontrov wrote:
             | M&A people specialize in making excuses as to why _their_
             | merger will definitely be something positive that benefits
             | the market and society at large. Of course, time usually
             | proves them wrong and nobody is ever held accountable, but
             | don 't underestimate them, they are good at this.
        
         | xyst wrote:
         | yup. And most of these acquisitions end up just sitting on a
         | shelf so the company can hoard the IP rights.
         | 
         | So nvidia can rest assured that nobody will touch them, or at
         | least impede their progress significantly.
        
           | jijijijij wrote:
           | Honestly, I think it may be just a "marketing stunt" to feed
           | the profitable hype for them, right now, in times of growing
           | AI disillusion. Same with OpenAI and Moderna.
        
       | cheselnut wrote:
       | NVIDIA's vertically integrating their platform and making it the
       | single place for your AI infra needs - pretty cool
        
         | Hrun0 wrote:
         | I don't share your enthusiasm for monopolies
        
           | Rinzler89 wrote:
           | It's cool if you're Nvidia, work for them or own stocks. Not
           | so much otherwise.
        
           | rchaud wrote:
           | Reading Stratechery has got a lot of people talking like a
           | buy-side equities analyst when discussing companies. Vendor
           | lock-in is now a good thing. /s
        
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