AI 칩 스타트업 그록(Groq), 6천5백만 달러 유치

What does an AI company do after one of those not-acqui-hire deals, where a rival pays investors a hefty IP "licensing" fee while poaching its critical talent? For AI chipmaker Groq, the answer appears to be raise more money from investors — who were said to have profited handsomely after a deal with Nvidia in December — hire more talent, and pivot. On Monday, Groq announced a new $650 million funding round, confirming earlier reports . The raise comes roughly six months after Nvidia signed a non-exclusive licensing agreement for Groq's technology and hired away founder and CEO Jonathan Ross, president Sunny Madra, and other employees. Groq did not disclose its new valuation. It was last valued at $6.9 billion following a $750 million round in September. Ross, who came from Google, was known in the AI chip world for helping create Google's AI chip, the Tensor Processing Unit . He teamed up with another Google engineer, Doug Wightman, to launch Groq a decade ago. Wightman stayed on after the Nvidia deal and became CEO. Groq created a chip it called a language processing unit (LPU), used for inference, and sold it as part of a cloud service or an on-premises hardware cluster. With Nvidia now owning the IP for LPUs, the GPU giant announced its own hardware cluster, the Nvidia Groq 3 LPX inference hardware system, at its GTC event in March. In response, Groq has pivoted to its neocloud business, it said. That business had been run by Madra after Groq acquired his AI data analytics company Definitive Intelligence, in 2024. It has grown to 13 data centers across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and APAC and is serving over five million developers and thousands of AI companies, processing trillions of tokens each week, the company says. Groq has also been hiring replacement execs. It added Alan Rice as COO, previously at xAI and Meta, after a career in the U.S. Navy. It also added an entrepreneurial duo, Sinclair Schuller, who joins as CTO, and Rakesh Malhotra as CPO. They previously worked together at Apprenda, an enterprise cloud software company founded by Schuller; they then co-founded Nuvalence, a software-engineering firm acquired by EY in 2024. Malhotra previously spent about a decade working on Microsoft's cloud products. Whether Groq can succeed after almost selling itself depends on how competitive its inference cloud can remain, now that the key hardware IP is shared with Nvidia. Certainly, it has a shot. Inference-related tech is an area experiencing tremendous demand (and VC investment ). But it's also seeing increasing innovation and competition. Still, others seem to have survived these sorts of deals. Scale AI's CEO Jason Droege told Forbes that business has rebounded after Meta did a $14.3 billion not-acqui-hire about a year ago, and that the company is on track to do $1 billion in revenue. In the big-money game of AI, anything seems possible. Topics AI , groq , Hardware , Startups , TC When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission . This doesn’t affect our editorial independence. Julie Bort Venture Editor Julie Bort is the Startups/Venture Desk editor for TechCrunch. You can contact or verify outreach from Julie by emailing julie.bort@techcrunch.com or via @Julie188 on X. View Bio June 18 Los Angeles Get an inside look at what it takes to scale and succeed from leaders at Mach Industries, Founders Fund, and Shinkei Systems. Through candid fireside chats and high-impact networking, you'll walk away with valuable insights and new connections. REGISTER NOW Most Popular Every new iOS 27 feature that's worth knowing about Lauren Forristal The US says ASML's top chip tool may be in China, but how? Connie Loizos The 11 standout startups from YC's Demo Day, according to VCs Marina Temkin Dominic-Madori Davis NASA picks Eric Schmidt's rocket company for Mars mission, setting up a race with SpaceX Tim Fernholz Snap finally debuts its long-awaited AR glasses, Specs, and, oof, they aren't cheap Lucas Ropek SpaceX to acquire Cursor for $60B in stock, days after blockbuster IPO Sean O'Kane ChatGPT's market share slips below 50% for first time Ivan Mehta