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Nvidia's $20B antitrust loophole

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Re: Nvidia's $20B antitrust loophole

#91

Post by lumost »

spiantino wrote: post #87
Salman23 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 )

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 e…

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."

Re: Nvidia's $20B antitrust loophole

#92

Post by tw04 »

whatevertrevor wrote: post #86

> 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 be…

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.

Re: Nvidia's $20B antitrust loophole

#93

Post by chongli »

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

Re: Nvidia's $20B antitrust loophole

#94

Post by wmf »

pjb88 wrote: post #84

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.

It's going to be the same. It may never get better though.

Re: Nvidia's $20B antitrust loophole

#95

Post by whatevertrevor »

tw04 wrote: post #92
whatevertrevor wrote: post #86

> 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 be…

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…

"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.

Re: Nvidia's $20B antitrust loophole

#96

Post by saghm »

Arainach wrote: post #38
saghm wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 salar…

At larger companies I can sell my stock immediately, and the salary and benefits are better.

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.

Re: Nvidia's $20B antitrust loophole

#97

Post by spiantino »

lumost wrote: post #91
spiantino wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 e…

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."

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

Re: Nvidia's $20B antitrust loophole

#98

Post by paxys »

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.

Re: Nvidia's $20B antitrust loophole

#99

Post by altairprime »

lovich wrote: post #76
altairprime wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 c…

Works for me! I do tend to be more optimistic than most. I would scale it so that the tax scale is applied with an exponential factor that concentrates the impact on high-revenue businesses while protecting low-revenue ones. (And I suppose as a bonus it would provide a financial counter-incentive against merged conglomerates, too.)
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