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Nvidia to buy assets from Groq for $20B cash

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Re: Nvidia to buy assets from Groq for $20B cash

#341

Post by sandworm101 »

lumost wrote: post #213
gchadwick wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example of the growing trend of buying out key parts of a company to avoid any actual acquisition? I wonder if equity holding employees get anything from the deal or indeed if all the investors will be seeing a return from this?

I wonder if such deals will create employee lawsuits. I'd certainly be looking at legal options if I was one of the founding employees.

>> one of the founding employees

If you were an employee, you were not a founder. A founding-employee would be someone who explicitly "invested" time/money into a company without compensation. If you are also an employee earning a wage you better have a written agreement stating what amount was "investment" and what amount was compensated wage.

Re: Nvidia to buy assets from Groq for $20B cash

#342

Post by sandworm101 »

lumost wrote: post #213
gchadwick wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example of the growing trend of buying out key parts of a company to avoid any actual acquisition? I wonder if equity holding employees get anything from the deal or indeed if all the investors will be seeing a return from this?

I wonder if such deals will create employee lawsuits. I'd certainly be looking at legal options if I was one of the founding employees.

>> one of the founding employees

If you were an employee, you were not a founder. A founding-employee would be someone who explicitly "invested" uncompensated time/money into a company without compensation and also worked as an employee. If you are also an employee earning a wage you better have a written agreement stating what amount was "investment" and what amount was compensated wage.

Re: Nvidia to buy assets from Groq for $20B cash

#343

Post by petcat »

crote wrote: post #330
petcat wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

do they make a salary

Startups often pay a shitty salary in exchange for a decent chunk of stock options, with the implicit promise that you'll make bank if you work hard and make the company successful. Getting screwed out of your payout by such a totally-not-an-acquisition is wage theft. It's like promising a sales-related bonus at the beginning of the year, and then in December changing the metric to "AI-related sales to the CEO's golf…

Startup options are worthless. The only value most people will ever extract from a startup is the experience they had working there, and the salary that was put in their bank account.

I understand that a lot of inexperienced people (like in this thread) think they're going to get rich though.

No, it is not "wage theft" to not get rich when the company exits (by whatever means).

Re: Nvidia to buy assets from Groq for $20B cash

#345

Post by throwawayqqq11 »

oblio wrote: post #334
sigmoid10 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As this gets more common, I think it will eventually lead to startups having a hard time attracting talent with lucrative equity compensation. It will be interesting to see how long it takes until this catches on among employees, but I already wouldn't take any positions in startups with a significant payment in equity anymore. The chances are slim that this pays out anyways, but now even when you are successful, noo…

With the job market being in the state it is in, there will always be people wanting to take their chances. Let's face it and accept that the golden days of people working in tech startup (and soon large companies) are over. RIP 1980 - 2023.

Looking at GDP, the golden age is still right here.

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location...

/s

Re: Nvidia to buy assets from Groq for $20B cash

#346

Post by bilbo0s »

zipy124 wrote: post #337
nabla9 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a non-exclusive deal. No reason for antitrust action whatsoever.

Non exclusive deal but also acquiring a lot of the staff, which seems pretty exclusive in that term.

Yeah but that's going nowhere in court right?

You can't have the government coming in telling a scientist who he has to work for. People are free to take jobs at whatever company they like.

This is just a clever mechanism of paying that intellectual capital an amount of money so far outside the bounds of a normal salary that it borders on obscenity.

All that said, I don't say anything when Jordan Love or Patrick Mahomes are paid hundreds of millions, so I need to learn to shut my mouth in this case as well. I just think it sucks for the regular employees. I guarantee they will lose their jobs over the next 24 months.

Re: Nvidia to buy assets from Groq for $20B cash

#347

Post by snarf21 »

mupuff1234 wrote: post #301
gchadwick wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another example of the growing trend of buying out key parts of a company to avoid any actual acquisition? I wonder if equity holding employees get anything from the deal or indeed if all the investors will be seeing a return from this?

If I had to guess I'd say investors get their returns but non exec employees mostly get screwed.

I was involved in a (obviously smaller) situation with an acquisition that went to a top consumer CPU maker (you can guess). The investors got nothing as the buyout money was used to fund new pivots in the existing company. So no options or shares were monetized and investors maintained their existing stake that had technically the save value, just most of the value was temporarily all cash. The only people to make out were the ones who went with the asset sale (retention bonus stuff) and the leadership that stayed (raises, etc.)

Re: Nvidia to buy assets from Groq for $20B cash

#348

Post by kasey_junk »

sigmoid10 wrote: post #313
jbkkd wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a friend who worked in a company that got "not acquired" in a similar deal. She didn't see a dime out of it, and was let off (together with a big chunk of people) within 6 months.

As this gets more common, I think it will eventually lead to startups having a hard time attracting talent with lucrative equity compensation. It will be interesting to see how long it takes until this catches on among employees, but I already wouldn't take any positions in startups with a significant payment in equity anymore. The chances are slim that this pays out anyways, but now even when you are successful, noo…

At my last job search I didn’t consider any equity based startups seriously because of this trend. It was already such a tenuous path as it stood, but now with the norm established it seems like it’s become impossible for a rank and file employee to get paid out.

I’m more curious how angel investors are being treated in these exits. If _they_ dry up the whole pipeline goes away

Re: Nvidia to buy assets from Groq for $20B cash

#349

Post by bilbo0s »

siliconc0w wrote: post #192
nabla9 wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a non-exclusive deal. No reason for antitrust action whatsoever.

It's a backdoor acquisition by looting the key talent.

It's the opposite of an acquisition.

It's literally:

"I don't want you and your 200 tensorflow/pytorch monkeys. I just want your top scientist and I need a clever way to offer him a nine figure salary. Good of you to grant him so much stock and not options. Now I can just make a transfer to your shareholders, of which he is one! Awesome! Now I don't have to buy your company!"

I'll give you bonus points if you can guess what happens to the worthless options all those TF/PyTorch monkeys are holding?

Guys, seriously, be careful who you go to work for, because chances are, you are not the key scientist.

Re: Nvidia to buy assets from Groq for $20B cash

#350

Post by seehafer »

throwawayqqq11 wrote: post #345
oblio wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With the job market being in the state it is in, there will always be people wanting to take their chances. Let's face it and accept that the golden days of people working in tech startup (and soon large companies) are over. RIP 1980 - 2023.

Looking at GDP, the golden age is still right here. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.CD?location... /s

Though (very) unevenly distributed
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