My company had a really terrible experience trying to use Groq, and I would NOT recommend anyone use their service if you need reliability. So many random errors, so many silly quirks.
I don't really get the value proposition of groq as a user, the performance is really poor for the token price. Data centres on the other hand are becoming a commodity, and I don't see any reason a priori to invest in groq specifically for something like that.
Groq is considerably faster and better at inference, they have a totally superior product to Nvidia for inference based tasks, which will be the dominant concern in the future.
Plausibly, take all the Nvidia hype and multiply that by a factor and that's what 'Groq' could be worth.
And there is no real commodification - there's Nvidia, Cerebras, Groq ... not many otheres.
I love Groq, but across every single line break in your post there is a glaring issue that is easy to refute with in 15 seconds, even without 300t/s of throughput.
what's the confusion. Groq offers a fast inference solution that is currently unique (why do you think Nvidia paid $8 billion to end-run around the SEC to acquire the technology). This is good news as it ensures that Groq customers can can be assured continuity to use their service.
I’m confused by the confusion. Groq licensed their technology (sold part of their business) to Nvidia for a large amount of money and distributed the spoils to their investors. Seems quite normal? But then the Axios article says…
“Existing shareholders will receive the remaining cash distributions and then have the opportunity to invest into a new company”
New company? But Groq still exists and continued to exist.
“The bottom line: Don't be surprised if this becomes a new transaction template in the AI private markets.”
A transaction template? I don’t follow what was novel about this situation. The Meta not-acquisition-acquisition of Scale seems more novel.
I guess I feel like Zach’s confusion is because of the way Axios has presented what is happening to Groq. Looking at why actually happened with Groq, it seems like Axios are reporting it weird.
Unless Groq really is starting a new company in which case I am equally as confused.
The interesting thing here isn't "how, logistically, is the Groq corporate entity able to raise more money?". That's straightforward.
Rather, the interesting thing and the topic of most of the article is "how, after Nvidia hired most of Groq's team and licensed all their IP, did Groq manage to convince investors to invest in the remaining corporate entity?"
There's nothing normal at all about the Nvidia Groq deal, it's hard to read in terms of what it means. A straight licensing deal would have been easier to ingest.
I could be completely off the mark but I thought the non-exclusive license was necessary because Groq’s datacenter business uses the technology already? Nvidia acquired the assets but Groq needed to retain rights to use the technology for their own product.
Please don't post shallow-indignant comments. The article raises an interesting question. If the discussion terminates in an angry cliché before it even gets started, that's a boring outcome.
Well dang, that's sort of my goal. I think the masses should be angry and should be highly polarized (regardless if its cliche) against the groups of people investing billions in chat bots while millions can't afford food and medicine.
I’ll also agree with you, this is not a topic that needs nuance, it’s as straightforward as fuck the billionaire class.
If you want nuance, the obvious answer to this is that the rules that apply at our level do not apply to them. Raising money is an inevitability and does not require any fundamental basis other than the name behind it.
My company had a really terrible experience trying to use Groq, and I would NOT recommend anyone use their service if you need reliability. So many random errors, so many silly quirks.
I don't really get the value proposition of groq as a user, the performance is really poor for the token price. Data centres on the other hand are becoming a commodity, and I don't see any reason a priori to invest in groq specifically for something like that.
Groq is considerably faster and better at inference, they have a totally superior product to Nvidia for inference based tasks, which will be the dominant concern in the future.
Plausibly, take all the Nvidia hype and multiply that by a factor and that's what 'Groq' could be worth.
And there is no real commodification - there's Nvidia, Cerebras, Groq ... not many otheres.
Define “totally superior”?
Was this comment created using quantized llama 3?
I love Groq, but across every single line break in your post there is a glaring issue that is easy to refute with in 15 seconds, even without 300t/s of throughput.
> they have a totally superior product to Nvidia for inference based tasks
They're not really competing with Nvidia because 1) Nvidia owns their chips now, and 2) Nvidia is not really an inference provider.
what's the confusion. Groq offers a fast inference solution that is currently unique (why do you think Nvidia paid $8 billion to end-run around the SEC to acquire the technology). This is good news as it ensures that Groq customers can can be assured continuity to use their service.
I’m confused by the confusion. Groq licensed their technology (sold part of their business) to Nvidia for a large amount of money and distributed the spoils to their investors. Seems quite normal? But then the Axios article says…
“Existing shareholders will receive the remaining cash distributions and then have the opportunity to invest into a new company”
New company? But Groq still exists and continued to exist.
“The bottom line: Don't be surprised if this becomes a new transaction template in the AI private markets.”
A transaction template? I don’t follow what was novel about this situation. The Meta not-acquisition-acquisition of Scale seems more novel.
I guess I feel like Zach’s confusion is because of the way Axios has presented what is happening to Groq. Looking at why actually happened with Groq, it seems like Axios are reporting it weird.
Unless Groq really is starting a new company in which case I am equally as confused.
edit: when announced last year it was announced as an asset acquisition https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/24/nvidia-buying-ai-chip-startu...
The interesting thing here isn't "how, logistically, is the Groq corporate entity able to raise more money?". That's straightforward.
Rather, the interesting thing and the topic of most of the article is "how, after Nvidia hired most of Groq's team and licensed all their IP, did Groq manage to convince investors to invest in the remaining corporate entity?"
I thought you wrote the convincing explanation:
“One could argue that Groq’s datacenters alone could make them worth billions of dollars.”
Groq is a successful datacenter business with a high-revenue cloud product. That’s a compelling investment in its own right, right?
> Groq Launches European Data Center Footprint in Helsinki, Finland
https://groq.com/newsroom/groq-launches-european-data-center...
That sounds like they are renting racks in a Equinix data centre. Do Groq have 4 data centers worth billions?
There's nothing normal at all about the Nvidia Groq deal, it's hard to read in terms of what it means. A straight licensing deal would have been easier to ingest.
I could be completely off the mark but I thought the non-exclusive license was necessary because Groq’s datacenter business uses the technology already? Nvidia acquired the assets but Groq needed to retain rights to use the technology for their own product.
They could have sold the IP then licensed it back. The nonexclusive part was purely a fig leaf to dodge antitrust.
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Please don't post shallow-indignant comments. The article raises an interesting question. If the discussion terminates in an angry cliché before it even gets started, that's a boring outcome.
Well dang, that's sort of my goal. I think the masses should be angry and should be highly polarized (regardless if its cliche) against the groups of people investing billions in chat bots while millions can't afford food and medicine.
I’ll also agree with you, this is not a topic that needs nuance, it’s as straightforward as fuck the billionaire class.
If you want nuance, the obvious answer to this is that the rules that apply at our level do not apply to them. Raising money is an inevitability and does not require any fundamental basis other than the name behind it.
You might get downvoted to oblivion, but you are completely right.