Nvidia Rival Groq Raises $640 Million in a New Funding Round

By Danielle Ong

Aug 06 2024, 02:22 AM EDT

Beijing Offers Subsidies for Companies That Buy Local AI Chips as China Cuts Reliance on Foreign Technology — Beijing city officials are providing subsidies for businesses that buy artificial intelligence (AI) chips made in China. Igor Omilaev on Unsplash

Groq, an artificial intelligence chipmaking startup, has secured more than $600 million in a recent funding round, the company announced Monday.

In a press release, Groq said it raised $640 million in a new Series D funding round led by BlackRock Private Equity Partners, Cisco Investments, KDDI, Neuberger Berman, Samsung Catalyst Fund, and Type One Ventures.

"The market for AI compute is meaningful and Groq's vertically integrated solution is well positioned to meet this opportunity. We look forward to supporting Groq as they scale to meet demand and accelerate their innovation further," Samir Menon, Managing Director at BlackRock, said in the release.

The tranche is a major win for Groq, which was originally looking to raise $300 million at a slightly lower valuation. The recent funding round now brings Groq's total raised to over $1 billion and values the company at $2.8 billion.

"We intend to make the resources available so that anyone can create cutting-edge AI products, not just the largest tech companies," Groq CEO and Founder Jonathan Ross said. "Having secured twice the funding sought, we now plan to significantly expand our talent density. We're the team enabling hundreds of thousands of developers to build on open models and - we're hiring."

How Could the Funding Round Affect Nvidia

The funding comes after Groq, last year, adapted Meta Platforms' large language model, LLaMA, to run its own chips rather than use those of Nvidia's.

In addition to the funding, Groq also secured Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun to serve as a technical advisor and Stuart Pann, the former head of Intel's foundry business, as the chief operating officer.

Groq's successful funding round will help it meet its goal to deploy 180,000 LPU chips by the end of the first quarter of 2025. It could also help bring down the astronomically high prices of AI chips on the market, which is currently dominated by Nvidia. In fact, the company currently controls around 70% to 95% of the AI chip space and has a near-80% gross margin.

Funding