Nvidia Is Getting Creative as Options to Use Its Cash Flood Narrow

The tricky thing about being Nvidia NVDA -0.55%decrease; red down pointing triangle these days is that the AI-chip giant has to find ways to spend billions of dollars while seemingly getting little to show for it. 

It is a high-quality problem for sure. The $20 billion that Nvidia is spending on a “nonexclusive licensing agreement” with a nine-year-old AI chip startup called Groq is triple the price of the company’s largest outright acquisition to date. But much has changed since Nvidia bought Mellanox in early 2020. The company’s business has skyrocketed in that time, transforming it from a niche videogame-chip provider to the world’s most valuable enterprise.