Groq raises $650M, pivots to AI inference cloud

AI startup Groq has raised $650 million in a new funding round and plans to become an AI inference cloud service provider. The company earlier signed a non-exclusive licensing deal with Nvidia, granting it LPU inference technology for $20 billion, with some team members joining Nvidia. Groq says it has the only engineering team with real-world experience running large-scale LPU systems. It currently operates 13 data centers across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific, serving over 5 million developers and thousands of AI-native companies, processing trillions of tokens every week. Next, Groq aims to scale its AI inference infrastructure, deploying its latest inference tech and Nvidia's LPX systems, targeting 200MW of computing power by the end of 2027.