Nvidia taps Groq tech, recruits top executives to boost AI inference

Nvidia has reportedly agreed to purchase key assets from AI chip startup Groq in a cash deal reportedly valued at around $20 billion. With this, Nvidia will hire its top executives, including founder and CEO Jonathan Ross, as the chipmaker looks to improve its position in the AI race, Groq said in a blog post.

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The agreement follows a growing trend among major technology companies, which have increasingly opted to secure access to promising startups’ technology and talent through licensing and hiring arrangements rather than full acquisitions. Nvidia confirmed that the deal involves a non-exclusive license to Groq’s chip technology, though financial terms were not disclosed.

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For the unversed, the startup designs chips that rely on on-chip SRAM memory instead of external high-bandwidth memory, enabling faster inference but limiting model size. Groq is known for its running the trained models to generate responses for users. While Nvidia dominates the market for training large AI models, inference has become more competitive, with rivals such as AMD and emerging startups like Groq and Cerebras Systems targeting the space.

According to the reports, Ross, who has played a key role in developing Google’s AI chip programme, along with Groq president Sunny Madra and members of the company’s engineering team, will join Nvidia. Groq said it will continue operating as an independent company under new CEO Simon Edwards, and its cloud services business will remain unaffected.

Previously, CNBC stated that Nvidia had agreed to acquire Groq for $20 billion in cash, but neither Nvidia nor Groq commented on that report. Groq has recently raised $750 million in a funding round that valued the company at $6.9 billion, more than doubling its valuation from a year earlier.

Overall, this does not seem to be a surprise. Many big tech companies including Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Nvidia itself have recently spent billions of dollars to license technology and recruit AI talent without acquiring entire companies.

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Ashish Singh

Ashish Singh is the Chief Copy Editor at Digit. He's been wrangling tech jargon since 2020 (Times Internet, Jagran English '22). When not policing commas, he's likely fueling his gadget habit with coffee, strategising his next virtual race, or plotting a road trip to test the latest in-car tech. He speaks fluent Geek. View Full Profile