Nvidia 'buys' Groq for $20 billion

The deal is framed as a 'technology licensing agreement', under which Nvidia acquires all the startup's technologies, and almost all key employees move to work at Nvidia. This practice has become popular in recent years — Google bought character.ai and Windsurf, Microsoft acquired Inflection, etc. The main advantage of this type of deal is that it can be conducted without regulatory approval. However, the biggest loss is for the startup employees who are left behind — since technically this is not a purchase, their stake in the startup simply becomes worthless. The valuation is certainly astronomical for such a company and it is unclear what it is based on — in September the company was worth only $6.9 billion. Personally, two options come to mind: either Nvidia's insurance against a worsening situation in the memory market, or specialized systems for speculative decoding, as Nvidia is already doing with Rubin CPX purely for pre-filling. What do you think, where does such a valuation come from?