Nvidia is said to have closed a licensing agreement with Groq for 20 billion dollars.
Nvidia has closed a non-exclusive licensing agreement with AI chip developer Groq. At the same time, the tech giant is recruiting Groq founder and CEO Jonathan Ross, president Sunny Madra and other employees. Nvidia confirms this following reports from CNBC, among others.
According to CNBC, Nvidia would take over approximately 20 billion dollars in assets from Groq. However, Nvidia emphasizes that it is not an acquisition of the company and gave no further details about the size of the deal. If that amount is correct, it would be the largest transaction in Nvidia’s history.
Strategic move
Nvidia’s GPUs have become the industry standard for training and running AI models. Groq positioned itself as a challenger with an alternative approach: the Language Processing Unit (LPU). The chip developer claims that its LPUs can run large language models up to ten times faster while requiring only a tenth of the energy consumption. Jonathan Ross played a key role in the development of the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), Google’s AI chip.
Talent and technology
By recruiting Ross and other Groq top figures, Nvidia not only strengthens its technological position, but also brings in strong profiles. The combination of Nvidia’s scale and Groq’s architecture can further increase Nvidia’s position in the AI chip market, even though the license remains non-exclusive.