Yesterday, ahead of Bloomberg's scoop on the U.S. Department of Justice issuing subpoenas to Nvidia and others as they investigate possible antitrust violations, we had a post on the coming shift in the use of AI chips from training Large Language Models to inference, actually getting something useful out of the LLMs, "Chips: The Pivot From Training To Inference (where Nvidia's dominance isn't as strong)."
The primary link in that post was to an IEEE Spectrum article on recent performance tests of various chips in inference mode. Our post then veered off to look at Cerebras Systems' very competitive offering for inference chores.
Which ended up with a cryptic/borderline coy (only borderline, I've never been accused of being coy) outro:
...Nvidia is well aware of Cerebras and has been quietly working their inference speeds but should all else fail, NVDA has $34.8 billion in cash and equivalents, friendly bankers and stock that seems pretty darn fungible with U.S. dollars.
If you catch my drift.
That obscurity was deliberate. Even without knowledge of the subpoenas, it is widely known that one of the subjects of the antitrust probe is Nvidia's $700 million purchase of Run:ai in April. (the other area of interest is whether Nvidia was illegally bundling various products and/or giving disparate treatment to customers who would or wouldn't buy the packages, including longer wait-times for chips etc., or differential pricing for customers who bought exclusively from Nvidia)
There are many ways that the acquisition of a non-competitor can be restraint-of-trade in violation of the antitrust rules and regs. The most egregious examples were committed by Facebook.*
Fortunately for those of us looking at these issues from the outside, the antitrust/competition mavens at the University of Chicago's Stigler Center just had a symposium on this very topic and put together a few articles for their in-house publication, ProMarket:
August 30The Case for Vigilance in AI Markets
Stacey Dogan writes that antitrust regulators in the United States and Europe are right to investigate Big Tech-AI partnerships. Even if AI markets remain competitive today, history and economics show that the Big Tech companies will push to monopolize segments of the AI market if given the opportunity. The investigations serve as a deterrent against anticompetitive behavior and give the regulators access to the knowledge and information that will be necessary to detect anticompetitive patterns as the AI market matures.Editor’s Note: This article is part of a symposium which asks experts to evaluate the anticompetitive harms of Big Tech investments in AI startups in light of recent investigations from antitrust agencies on both sides of the Atlantic. See here to read the other contributions from Matt Perault, Vivek Ghosal, and John Kirkwood.
Antitrust authorities in the United States and around the world have expressed keen interest in the growing web of relationships between dominant tech firms and artificial intelligence (AI) developers. The relationships have come fast and furiously, accompanied by hefty price tags and dressed up in a variety of transactional forms. The firms present the deals as innovation and efficiency-enhancing and characterize the AI marketplace as highly competitive....
....MUCH MORE
August 29
How Big Tech’s AI Startup Alliances Could Harm Competition
John B. Kirkwood explains six ways in which Big Tech’s alliances with AI startups could harm competition, making clear that the antitrust agencies have good reason to monitor and investigate them....
....MUCH MORE
August 27
Big Tech Investments in AI Startups Do Not Raise Competitive Red Flags
Vivek Ghosal reviews the data, economics, and market conditions of the growing artificial intelligence market and finds that it is quite dynamic in terms of evolving partnerships and firms, and is relatively competitive. Thus, Big Tech investments into AI startups do not warrant investigation by the government at this time....
....MUCH MORE
August 26
The Deals That Will Hamper Competition in AI Markets
Matt Perault writes that there is little indication that Big Tech investments in artificial intelligence startups are harming competition. In fact, the opposite is likely true. Antitrust regulators should instead focus their attention on the real threat to AI competition: rules and regulations that will make it harder for startups that to compete with large tech companies....
....MUCH MORE
*Regarding Facebook, some prior posts:
Back in August we posted "Facebook Antitrust: Restraint of Trade (FB)" which referenced. a drum yours truly has been beating for a couple years
We've mentioned a few times that Google and in particular Facebook are susceptible to old-school antitrust analysis because of their use of the John D. Rockefeller "Buy 'em, Copy 'em, or Crush 'em" approach to competition:
"FTC probes Facebook's acquisition practices - WSJ" (FB)which links back to some earlier posts, see (waaay) below.
For the moment this link is a placeholder but I'm pretty sure we'll be refering back to it.
Facebook Antitrust: Restraint of Trade (FB)
72 Facebook Acquisitions – The Complete List (2019)!
FTC Head Says He’s Willing to Dismember Big Tech Platforms BY UNDOING PAST MERGERS (FB; GOOG; TWTR)
Facebook and Google have an especially egregious pattern of acquiring, crushing or copying nascent competition, the type of behavior most amenable to classical antitrust analysis. See:
- Have A Start-Up? DON'T Step Into Google and Facebook’s “Kill Zone”: (FB; GOOG)
- "Facebook’s willingness to copy rivals’ apps seen as hurting innovation" (FB).
- Chicago Booth: “Google Is as Close to a Natural Monopoly as the Bell System Was in 1956″ (GOOG, FB)
- "The DOJ’s antitrust chief just telegraphed exactly how it could go after Google, Apple and other big tech companies" (GOOG; FB; TWTR; AMZN)
- "...How Facebook Squashes Competition From Startups" (FB, AMZN, AAPL, GOOG)
I've been told I'm a blast at parties.
