A report published by the Wall Street Journal on Monday surfaces an accusation that Nvidia might be willing to delay data center GPU orders if it becomes aware of a customer looking for greener pastures. Thus, rival AI chipmaker Groq says that fearful customers are secretive about acquiring or designing AI acceleration technology for fear of retaliatory shipment delays. This stands in contrast to Nvidia's own statements on the matter, with the company saying that it is trying to allocate supply fairly and to offer customers alternative access to compute while they wait for their shipments.
It would be a pity if something were to happen to your pending GPU order...
Fear of being found out is so strong that it isn’t uncommon for people to deny they have had meetings with rival AI accelerator chip firms, Jonathan Ross, CEO of rival chip startup Groq, told the WSJ.
“A lot of people that we meet with say that if Nvidia were to hear that we were meeting, they would disavow it,” Ross told the WSJ. “The problem is you have to pay Nvidia a year in advance, and you may get your hardware in a year, or it may take longer, and it’s, ‘Aw shucks, you’re buying from someone else, and I guess it’s going to take a little longer.’”
If true, this revelation has echoes of Intel using strong-arm tactics in the early noughties to disincentivize PC-making partners from offering AMD-inside systems. Elsewhere in the WSJ report, it's made clear that Nvidia is enjoying its dominance of the booming AI market, with an estimated 80% of companies using AI acceleration reliant upon the green team's hardware.
We aren’t competitors, honest
The WSJ report even seems to hint that tech goliaths like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon are making their own AI accelerators, yet insisting they aren’t planning to become Nvidia competitors.
In contrast to the statement from Ross, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is reported to have told an analyst that he tries to be fair in allocating GPUs to companies and will avoid selling to companies that won’t immediately use the accelerators.
Huang also indicated that he will introduce GPU customers to cloud providers to tide them over as they wait for GPU orders to be fulfilled. Incidentally, Nvidia invested heavily into a cloud company called CoreWeave, which operates large data centers stuffed with a significant fleet of Nvidia GPUs and rents out computing power.
Groq clearly isn't a disinterested third party observing all of this from afar. Quite the opposite in fact. And Nvidia is undoubtedly the 800 pound gorilla of the AI world right now. What isn't clear is whether there's any proof of malfeasance on the part of Nvidia, or whether anyone would dare to come forward with said proof if it exists.
