[HN Gopher] Nvidia's $20B antitrust loophole
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Nvidia's $20B antitrust loophole
Author : ossa-ma
Score : 269 points
Date : 2025-12-27 17:42 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ossa-ma.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (ossa-ma.github.io)
| ossa-ma wrote:
| No 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| Part 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 wrote:
| Given 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 wrote:
| Nobody in finance holds a high opinion of Chamath.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| You can feel animosity towards someone without thinking
| they've met the elements of a crime.
| lovich wrote:
| Do 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 wrote:
| It will be interesting to see if this is an exit for investors
| and which ones. Given it wasn't an acquisition but licensing.
| LarsDu88 wrote:
| So 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 wrote:
| Google also hired the core Windsurf engineering and research
| team, not OpenAI:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/google-hires-windsurf-ceo-r...
| yalogin wrote:
| Nvidia bought groq? I am out of the loop but what does groq have
| that they want?
| daemonologist wrote:
| Nvidia 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 wrote:
| I'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 wrote:
| Nvidia 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 wrote:
| A chip dedicated to inferencing that's better than their GPUs.
| vineethy wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| You'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 wrote:
| H100 has 80 GB of _HBM3_. There's only like 37 MB of SRAM on
| a single chip.
| bionhoward wrote:
| Would SRAM make weight updates prohibitive vs DRAM?
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Nvidia to buy assets from Groq for $20B cash_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46379183
| georgeburdell wrote:
| This 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 wrote:
| Right? As a former founder, I laugh every time I get a
| 'Founding Engineer' recruit email...
| paxys wrote:
| Yeah unless you are a founder or top investor it's pretty much
| a guarantee that there will be no exit.
| evilduck wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| It'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.
| Arainach wrote:
| At larger companies I can sell my stock immediately, and the
| salary and benefits are better.
| saghm wrote:
| My health insurance from AWS was about the same
| coverage/cost that I got from a startup I worked at that
| had 10 employees for a year or so afterwards, but the
| insurance from the startup had much better humans for me to
| talk to when there were issues. As for the extra money, my
| point was that I've found my quality of life is higher
| working for companies where I know where I stand in the
| medium-to-long term.
|
| I definitely don't have any illusions that this is based on
| a number of personal factors (e.g. my overall financial
| situation making any additional income not likely to
| drastically change my quality of life and the somewhat
| unorthodox medical needs of someone in my family causing me
| to need to talk to the insurance company a few times a year
| to sort things out). The comment at the beginning of this
| thread was asking " Who would join a startup these days?"
| though, so my answer is basically "someone like me". I
| don't pretend to have any idea how many others like me
| there are, only that the tradeoffs for larger companies
| don't really make much sense for me.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| If you need a job for things like food and housing a startup is
| cool.
|
| I fully expect to be lied to repeatedly though about my own
| pay, our prospects, etc. I had to learn the hard way that these
| lies are defacto legal because employees won't realistically be
| able to sue.
|
| But hey, the base pay is probably enough.
| nharada wrote:
| In that case working at a startup would be a thing someone
| would only do as a last resort, and the talent pool would
| consequently be extremely low quality. Sounds damaging to the
| scene to me.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Have you seen the tech market?
|
| A lot of good engineers are out of work. They'll gladly
| take what they can
| jmward01 wrote:
| It is definitely time to stop looking at equity as part of pay
| at a startup. The trend is extremely clear, startups aren't
| paying out to employees but the C suite gets internal raises
| and IPO is pushed to infinity. It is nice to have some paper
| laying around but that is all it is, paper. Go to a startup for
| a year. Get the experience, move and get a 20-50% pay increase
| and keep doing that every year and you will be way happier and
| financially healthier.
| tbrownaw wrote:
| I thought this was always the case? Hearing about examples
| certainly isn't new.
| Analemma_ wrote:
| It has always been the case, but each year there's a fresh
| crop of new, bright-eyed 20-year-olds who haven't learned
| it yet. The entire startup ecosystem essentially depends on
| the fact that some people haven't yet internalized that
| options are worthless and working 80+-hour weeks if you're
| employee #3 or higher never pays off, because even in the
| slim chance your company has a successful exit you'll get
| fucked over by antics like this.
|
| The best we can do is try and make "options have an EV of
| 0, startups aren't worth it, join a FAANG" a widely-known
| meme in places like HN to keep as many people as possible
| from having to lean this the hard way. We'll never save
| everyone, but at least it's more widely-known than it used
| to be.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Getting screwed over is a part of life.
|
| The problem imo is when you actively lie to me. I won't
| go into specifics, but I was lied to , said F em, went
| the legal route and got smacked down.
|
| It's not even worth a name and shame. Just sip a shot of
| whiskey and try to move on. This is why I like contract
| jobs. Ain't no equity. It's much more honest.
| jmward01 wrote:
| It hasn't actually always been the case and the real
| issue is the false advertising that you actually have
| equity. If my equity of 1% was real then I would get
| value as the company grew but the reality is that
| options/shares without some sort of exit is worth 0.
| Founders and the C suite often (always now?) get
| 'internal' raises meaning when a new round of funding
| hits they get to sell but nobody else does. This, to me,
| completely destroys the concept that equity is an
| incentive to build the company and means it should
| -never- be used as part of a hiring pitch since the
| people pitching it, founders and the upper management,
| obviously don't believe in it themselves. If you really
| want to see if the leadership believes in the junk they
| are telling you then ask them to put in writing that
| internal raises are available to all at the same
| percentages or they are available to nobody.
| tyre wrote:
| This is always the case. Negotiate equity, but assume it's
| worth zero. It's not liquid and highly speculative. It's a
| nice to have.
|
| edit: which doesn't mean join companies you don't believe in!
| Please do. But don't expect it to be there, don't include it
| in life plans, don't pay attention to valuations, etc.
| nerdsniper wrote:
| If the owners try to say the equity is valuable, have them
| convert it to salary. Then it will be clear they don't
| believe their own words.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| If you join a startup, and have equity that isn't special in
| some way (defending against liquidation preference or
| dilution), you're the sucker. You're just going to grind for
| someone else's payday when a deal is made in a room you're not
| in. You'll only be made rich if someone with the power to drive
| the decision thinks you should be. As always, it's who you know
| and being likable.
| LogicFailsMe wrote:
| Oh FFS 0.1% of this acquisition is $20M. 0.5% is $100M. Junior
| to senior equity lies in this range. They'll be more than fine.
| They'll be 1%ers to 0.1%ers after taxes, yeesh. It's never ever
| enough. is it?
| ricardobeat wrote:
| Those numbers are not realistic. At a company at this stage
| (series E I think?), you'll be lucky to have 0.01% as an
| engineer.
|
| Most importantly, there is no guarantee there will be any
| payout at all. It's not an acquisition and we don't know the
| terms.
| neilv wrote:
| I was talking with a great-sounding few-person early startup
| (nice people, non-evil business, interesting work, etc.), and
| they wanted me to fill a highly-skilled role... in-office in a
| VHCOLA, for $110K and "0.5%" in usual option schedule.
| (Presumably also with the usual barriers to options ever being
| exercised or liquidated equitably.)
|
| Even fresh grads with no experience take home more in this
| town.
|
| I live to work, and I'd be willing to spend a few more years in
| student-apartment quality of life, and to work like a strategic
| asset to make the startup successful. But I've learned that
| deal should include a FIRE lottery ticket, not a condo
| downpayment lottery ticket.
|
| If your early startup doesn't want to share significant equity,
| https://levels.fyi/ provides TC numbers of what established
| companies are paying, even for people who wouldn't be good for
| a startup.
|
| Maybe it's the recent years of what VC culture has devolved to.
| ("Why is your cap table cutting in early key hires
| significantly? Do you have a leadership problem, bro?") Maybe
| this is just another facet of the "mask-off" or "late-stage
| capitalism" that people have started calling out in other
| facets of society.
| websiteapi wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| if 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 wrote:
| isn'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 wrote:
| Yeah 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
| altairprime wrote:
| Regulations 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.
| lovich wrote:
| > Regulations shouldn't have to change with every new fintech
| innovation...
|
| Hard disagree given that a lot of fintech innovation is
| increasingly devious ways to circumvent the spirit and the
| letter of the law
|
| > ... 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 there not so self-destructive as to choose the former out
| of spite
|
| Also hard disagree. The VC and investor people I've met and
| work with seemed to have a cultural aversion to labor being
| anywhere near the same level of compensation or power as
| them. I would fully expect them to take a deal that fucked
| over the employees if they got paid the same either way.
|
| You'd have to tune your suggested system so that not fucking
| over the employees was heavily incentivized
| irishcoffee wrote:
| > Regulations shouldn't have to change with every new fintech
| innovation
|
| Daww, it took almost until the end of the year to find the
| best joke of the year.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| IANAL, 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 wrote:
| Sure, 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.
| dangus wrote:
| The 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Read 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 wrote:
| Very interesting would love to read about this, do you have a
| link to the article?
| wmf wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| I 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 wrote:
| Yes 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)
| lumost wrote:
| Doesn'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.
| spiantino wrote:
| i thought so at first, but I did some digging and changed my
| mind. it's possible the following is how it goes:
|
| - secondary transaction with the preferred shareholders (VCs)
| at some price that implies a 20b valuation
|
| - founders quit and get new employment agreements
|
| - some cash is transferred to the company as a license fee
|
| - no acquisition means no DOJ approval
|
| in this scenario the headline can be $20b but the cash
| expense can be much lower, you have full flexibility to
| direct whatever cash or equity you want to founders vs the
| rest of the company, as an up front payment or as
| retention/salary, and the founders have no hinderance from
| working on anything they touched at previous company because
| of IP license.
|
| I actually bet this is how it went down. This is becoming the
| standard in the industry and it's just awful for the future
| of SV
| lumost wrote:
| Wouldn't this imply that the founder's don't get paid
| either? The acquirer would simply need to have buy-in from
| the investors to make the deal happen, and the founder
| would need an offer that is bigger than any other possible
| "soft landing."
| spiantino wrote:
| Founders could either get paid through secondary as well
| or through new employment agreements. Secondary is much
| more tax efficient, otherwise it doesn't really matter
| cubefox wrote:
| > 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.
| wmf wrote:
| OpenAI is trying to move as many requests as they can to a
| "smaller" model (still suspected to be ~200B).
| cubefox wrote:
| I suspect it to be >1T, just without reasoning.
| pton_xd wrote:
| So 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 wrote:
| Also 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?
| grensley wrote:
| A 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| That'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.
| MrGilbert wrote:
| > 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.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Nvidia didn't buy Groq because they need any "smart guys" at
| all.
| CalChris wrote:
| What 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.
| dang wrote:
| Related:
|
| _Nvidia to buy assets from Groq for $20B cash_ -
| 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 -
| Dec 2025 (133 comments)
| jandrese wrote:
| nVidia'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.
| esaym wrote:
| >Timing it for Christmas Eve ensures minimal media scrutiny of
| these connections.
|
| Sounds like the media is truly the one in charge.
| FL33TW00D wrote:
| Mr Kwok already analysed these deals and gave them a nice little
| acronym: HALO
|
| https://kwokchain.com/2025/07/15/the-halo-effect/
| pjb88 wrote:
| So... 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 wrote:
| It's going to be the same. It may never get better though.
| whatevertrevor wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| they 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 wrote:
| Physically 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 wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| I'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
| paxys wrote:
| This 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.
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