Former Groq engineers sue board over $20 billion Nvidia deal

Two former Groq engineers are suing Groq’s former board and former CEO Jonathan Ross, alleging the board handed over employees and company technology to Nvidia in a $20 billion deal. The proposed class action, filed in Delaware’s Court of Chancery by Benjamin Serebrin and Joshua Rubin and unsealed Monday, alleges the deal, with a $17 billion license fee for all backers and a separate $3 billion Nvidia stock pool for engineers who transferred, kept billions from other shareholders. Meanwhile, Groq is planning to deploy its own technology, now Nvidia’s Groq 3 LPX, the Financial Times reports.

Nvidia’s annual report (10-K) books $14.4 billion of the license as goodwill “primarily attributable to the workforce and future development of the licensed technology” plus $2.5 billion for the technology itself. The plaintiffs concede that “no Delaware decision has directly answered the question this case raises,” but the deal is already under a reported Department of Justice (DOJ) inquiry. …