Nvidia acquires AI chip challenger Groq for $20 billion, report says

Nvidia is buying AI chip startup Groq for $20 billion, according to a report from CNBC. This purchase is expected to be Nvidia’s largest ever, and with Groq on board, Nvidia is poised to become even more dominant in chipmaking.

As tech companies compete to expand their AI capabilities, they need computing power, and Nvidia’s GPUs have become the industry standard. But Groq has been working on another type of chip called an LPU (language processing unit), which he claimed to be able to direct LLMs 10 times faster and using a tenth of the energy. Groq CEO Jonathan Ross is known for this type of innovation: when he worked for Google, he helped invent the TPU (tensor processing unit), a custom AI accelerator chip.

In September, Groq raised $750 million at a valuation of $6.9 billion. Its growth has been rapid and significant: The company said it powers AI applications for more than 2 million developers, up from about 356,000 last year.

TechCrunch has contacted Nvidia for comment.