Nvidia competitor Groq raises $640M in new funding

J Studios
- Artificial intelligence startup Groq announced on Monday that it has raised $640M in a Series D funding round as it looks to compete with Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) in the semiconductor space.
- The new funding, which values the company at $2.8B, includes investors such as BlackRock (BLK), Neuberger Berman, Type One Ventures, Cisco (CSCO) and others. Groq produces language processing units, or LPUs, which it says are faster and more cost-efficient than GPUs for handling AI training needs.
- “You can’t power AI without inference compute,” said Jonathan Ross, CEO and Founder of Groq. “We intend to make the resources available so that anyone can create cutting-edge AI products, not just the largest tech companies. This funding will enable us to deploy more than 100,000 additional LPUs into GroqCloud.”
- The company also that former HP (HPQ) and Intel (INTC) executive Stuart Pann is joining the company as its Chief Operating Officer. It also agreed to a deal with Meta (META) AI executive Yann LeCun to be its newest technical advisor.