Big Tech just paid ~$40 billion in two years to avoid buying anything. The math is absurd. Google spent $2.4B on Windsurf to hire 40 people. That works out to $60M per head. Microsoft paid $650M to gut Inflection and take 70 employees. Amazon spent $400M+ on Covariant for three founders and 40 engineers. Google dropped $2.7B on Character AI to rehire Noam Shazeer, who they’d let walk in 2021. Now Nvidia announces $20B for Groq just three months after it raised at $6.9B. Every single one of these companies explicitly stated “we are not acquiring this company.” Jensen Huang literally told employees: “While we are adding talented employees to our ranks and licensing Groq’s IP, we are not acquiring Groq as a company.” Microsoft said the same about Inflection. Google said the same about Character AI and Windsurf. Amazon said the same about Adept and Covariant. The semantic gymnastics exist for one reason: antitrust. Traditional acquisitions trigger Hart-Scott-Rodino filing requirements. Regulators review. Competitors object. Deals take 12-18 months to close. In an AI arms race where model capabilities improve every 6 months, that regulatory timeline is existential. By the time a deal clears, the tech is already outdated. So Big Tech invented the “reverse acquihire.” Pay billions to license IP, hire the founding team, leave a shell company behind with a new CEO and a skeleton crew. Google did it with Character AI (Noam Shazeer + 30 researchers, left behind a co-op structure). Microsoft with Inflection (Mustafa Suleyman + 70 staff, left Sean White as CEO of nothing). Amazon twice with Adept (David Luan + research team) and Covariant (three co-founders + 25% of staff). Now Nvidia with Groq (Jonathan Ross + senior leadership, Simon Edwards inherits a cloud business). A whistleblower complaint filed with the FTC, DOJ, and SEC in January 2025 alleged that the Amazon-Covariant deal was “deliberately and unlawfully structured” to dodge antitrust review. The complaint claimed Covariant’s new CEO told employees that if Amazon had tried to buy them outright, regulators would have killed it. The deal terms reportedly restrict which licenses Covariant can sell without paying Amazon a fee. The FTC opened investigations into Microsoft-Inflection and Amazon-Adept. Both appear to be at a standstill. Amazon’s Adept deal closed without further action. The exposed logic: buying a company twice (once for talent, once for the husk) now costs less than waiting for regulatory approval of a single acquisition. Windsurf got split three ways in 72 hours. Google paid $2.4B for leadership and license. Cognition paid ~$250M for what remained. OpenAI walked away with nothing after Microsoft objected to IP terms. Big Tech found a loophole wide enough to drive $40 billion through while regulators debate whether hiring someone’s entire executive team and licensing all their IP counts as “control.”

Si vous croyez que Sandra des ressources humaines d'un SaaS de 10 millions de dollars va coder un système de paie, vous êtes complètement délirant.