[atif089]

> 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]

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]

> 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]

You 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.

[danaris]

Well, exactly.

Unfortunately, the time to be having these conversations was 40 years ago.

But you know the old saying: the next best time is right now.

It is, sadly, a near-impossibility that we could get decent antitrust under the current administration. But if we techies, as a sector, were able to pull ourselves together, genuinely recognize that the level of consolidation we have is very bad, and start collectively advocating for real change—for something more like what Lina Khan was doing under Biden, reversing the Reagan-era shift to the intellectually and morally bankrupt Chicago School interpretation of antitrust, and going back to actually forcing companies to prove that acquisitions will be good for everyone else, rather than forcing opponents to prove that they'll be bad in very specific ways...

Then we might have a chance to make real change, over the course of the next few years.

[bilbo0s]

Here’s the thing, this isn’t an acquisition. This is Nvidia hiring a few guys. What’s the government supposed to do? Tell those guys they can only work for one startup and they can never leave it? You can’t tell people what jobs they can and can’t take right now. (Probably not ever in the US given our history with slavery.)

Now, how do you stop that?

Companies don’t need to buy startups, they just need the expert that startup hired. Once they have the experts, everything else takes care of itself.

Point is, antitrust works fine. It just fixes the wrong problem. That was really the problem with khan. She never really figured out that the technologies have passed the legal framework by. She should have tried to come up with solutions to the problem of monopolizing intellectual capital rather than the problem of monopolizing markets or intellectual property.

[danaris]

No; they're supposed to tell Nvidia they can't hire those guys.

This isn't about the people being hired; it's about the company that's trying to headhunt them.

And, once again: robust, sane antitrust would never have let one company get as big, as vital to the tech sector, and wielding as much power as Nvidia does in the first place. If there were 8 companies that do what Nvidia does, letting one of them hire these guys wouldn't be nearly as much of a big deal.

> Point is, antitrust works fine.

Not the way we've been doing it, it doesn't. Like I said, that's the whole point.

[stefan_]

Nvidia didn't buy Groq because they need any "smart guys" at all.

[manquer]

Unlike other SaaS "acquisitions" of late, this will be not as straightforward closure of a subscription business.

The $1.5B contract with the Saudi Arabia is substantial and investors will want that monetized too, there are also existing DCs GroqCloud have in the ME region and also other spots around the world that are quite valuable for their hardware and power agreements etc.

Nvidia has CIFUS and other regulatory concerns and also don't want to compete against their customers be a neo cloud provider, the Saudis likely still want their DC build outs to proceed.

All this to say, the remaining parts while no longer as glamorous is still worth a lot and cannot be easily sold to big tech co. GroqCloud is more be like Nokia Technologies/ Networks rather be killed.

---

As a result, staff not part of the Nvidia deal likely have solid jobs and also now the opportunity to climb the ladder quickly now that a lot of leadership positions have opened up.

They are also going to have to be compensated higher in cash or poached by an upcoming chip startup as they are no longer tied to equity options vesting scheduled of a very valuable company (Pre deal Groq or now Nvidia).

In any scenario they will come out better of the deal, not as much they could have in a full acquisition yes, but certainly better than most engineers not working for a hyped AI startup nonetheless.