[credit_guy]

> 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.

[wmf]

The people now working for Nvidia will keep innovating but now with monopolistic pricing.

The $20B will be paid out to investors. Maybe GroqCloud will keep $1B to keep the lights on for a few years.

[credit_guy]

> The $20B will be paid out to investors.

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.

[wmf]

Right; Nvidia pays Groq then Groq pays the investors. Groq has no better use for the money.

[credit_guy]

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?

[wmf]

Consider it a prediction.

Update: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46408104

[credit_guy]

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?

[wkat4242]

> 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.