Nvidia licenses Groq technology and hires leadership to strengthen position in AI inference market

Nvidia Corporation NVDAhas announced a non-exclusive licensing agreement for the inference technology of startup Groq and the hiring of its key leadership. Under the deal, Groq founder and CEO Jonathan Ross jonathan ross, who previously led the AI chip program at Alphabet Inc. GOOGL, will join Nvidia Corporation. Joining him are Groq President Sunny Madra sunny madraand several members of the startup's engineering team. Despite these departures, Groq will continue to operate as an independent company in the US USwith Simon Edwards simon edwardsstepping in as the new CEO. Groq also confirmed that its cloud business will continue operating.

The move comes as Nvidia Corporationseeks to protect its market lead as the AI sector shifts from training models to inference, where trained models respond to user requests. While Nvidia Corporationcurrently dominates the training market, it faces explicit competition in the inference space from Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMDand startups like Cerebras Systems. Unlike many industry peers, Groq and Cerebras Systems do not use external high-bandwidth memory chips, instead utilizing on-chip SRAM to speed up AI interactions, though this approach limits the size of models that can be handled. Both firms have recently signed large deals in the Middle East, and Cerebras Systems plans to go public as soon as next year.