Nvidia agrees to a licensing deal with Groq; CEO Jonathan Ross and other top executives will join Nvidia; Groq says it will continue operating independently
anybody who knows anything about AI chips knows groq's first gen chips aren't competitive but maybe their upcoming chips might have been able to threaten nvidia? @josephjacks_ : Overly simplistic take from Groq competitor. Bubble Boi / @bubbleboi : Lmao Jensen wins again !!! @kakashiii111 : I doubt it will pass regulatory approval. Nothing to be excited about. Oh, and remember when Nvidia and everyone told you that TPUs were not a threat to Nvidia? Well... [image] James Wang / @draecomino : So many bad takes on Groq as if its LPU is some magical new architecture or a TPU for hire. Groq's micro architecture does not matter. The *only* reason Groq has any traction is because it bet on SRAM. Without SRAM, there's no speed advantage, no PMF, no demand, and no Matt Turck / @mattturck : Breaking: NVIDIA announces giant $20B acquisition, forcing everyone in tech to try to remember which one is Groq and which one is Grok Elias / @fcvprzhfgsybj : congrats to the groq team! :) may thy chips overheat and burn [image] Philip Johnston / @philipjohnston : Incredible outcome for Groq investors, congrats all! Derya Unutmaz / @deryatr_ : I agree this is a big deal, although for $20 billion NVIDIA got a non-exclusive licensing agreement for inference technology, and @GroqInc remains a separate company! @villi : Nvidia seems to be utilizing the same structure as other notable acquisitions in AI this year to avoid antitrust scrutiny. I wrote about how this works here. https://medium.com/... @josephjacks_ : Huge. Jensen buys @GroqInc for $20B cash.. @chamath clears > $1B net on the initial seed / A money they invested at $30M Val in 2016. 150X after dilution. Congrats to @JonathanRoss321 and team. Very bullish for NVIDIA to own this... Rohit / @krishnanrohit : The remnants of Scale, Windsurf, Groq, Character AI and Inflection should merge together to form a super zombie full stack powerhouse Dev Shah / @0xdevshah : Google will never sell TPUs. The moment Google sells TPUs at scale, they transform their architectural advantage into a commodity. Google's internal teams have first-order claims on TPU capacity because those workloads directly generate revenue and strategic moats. Any TPU sold Austin Lyons / @theaustinlyons : Acquihire? Kind of like $MSFT and Inflection AI, $META and Scale AI, etc? [image] Daniel Romero / @hypertechinvest : $NVDA buying Groq is more a sign of weakness than a sign of strength [image] @bearlyai : Nvidia will acquire assets and key talent from chipmaking startup Groq for $20B (officially called a “non-exclusive licensing agreement). Groq co-founder and CEO Jonathan Ross was lead designer and artchitect for the first generation of Google's TPU chips. He'll join Nvidia [image] Matthew Berman / @matthewberman : .@Nvidia sells chips, not inference. @GroqInc sells inference, not chips. Will be interesting to see how this strategy plays out. Turner Novak / @turnernovak : “You're bearish? CEO of the company propping up the global economy is closing $20B all-cash deals on Christmas Eve and you're bearish?” [image] Ed Zitron / @edzitron : Even if it does...Groq? This Groq? https://www.theinformation.com/ ... [image] Patrick Moorhead / @patrickmoorhead : If true, this is huge: -reaffirms XPU thesis -helps $NVDA hedge against XPU -solid hardware and software teams -not just because I was an early investor 😉 Jukan / @jukan05 : Dylan Patel speculates that Jensen may have pursued the acquisition because he saw something in Groq's 2nd- or 3rd-generation chips. Do you think Jensen viewed Groq's next-generation chips as a real threat to NVIDIA—strong enough to compete—and moved to eliminate a potential [image] Bill Gurley / @bgurley : Odd way to say “I was wrong”. Vinny Lingham / @vinnylingham : What a fantastic memory to read and outcome for the @GroqInc team and @chamath, @sundeep and @GavinSherry. Congrats guys - you all are living proof that cream rises to the top! Andrawes / @andrawesbahou : I think Nvidia acquired Groq *now*, to hedge against DRAM prices and capacity. If you didn't know, DRAM prices exploded recently. While nvidia GPUs are HBM (i.e DRAM heavy), Groq chips rely on in-chip SRAM. There are architectural and compiler-dependent ways to do this, so likely [image] Dev Shah / @0xdevshah : I think Sama missed this one. $20B is cheap for super fast inferencing. Arjun Malhotra / @badcapitalvc : Christmas came early for us this year! As early investors in @GroqInc, what a privilege to see this incredible journey to @nvidia - the biggest company in the world making their largest acquisition! Massive congrats to @sundeep, @GavinSherry, @n1th1nrao, and the entire Groq [image] @josephjacks_ : If NVIDIA implements Groq properly, and they have a stunningly great M&A integration history, it will result in trillions of additional market cap given the worlds insatiable demand for faster AI inference. This reminds me of NVIDIA's purchase of Mellanox in 2019 ($6.9B, also Valida Pau / @pauvalida : Nothing more enjoyable to do on Xmas eve :) Some of Nvidia's deal term with Groq and how Groq's tech helps Nvidia with its chip offering👇🏻 w/ @waynema @MilesKruppa @Katie_Roof [image] Camilo / @curiouscamilo : People criticize @chamath so much. This is a stellar memo. He's an extremely sharp and talented investor. Like Hummingbird, FF, and others, he proves right again that venture is an asset class of people: “Special person: Yes” “It's a team bet” [image] Anand Agarawala / @anandx : Incredibly proud seed investor. When a random intro you make 9 years ago turns into $20B 🤯🤯. Lesson: always try to be helpful! So proud of @sundeep and the whole squad. Wow!! What's the valuable company in the world makes their biggest acquisition ever 😱 Conor Sen / @conorsen : Dems should recognize that Silicon Valley has hacked M&A, so Lina Khan can block struggling airlines from merging but Mark Zuckerberg can get the key people and IP from the next Instagram with or without a formal merger. Jeff Weinstein / @jeffreyw5000 : HUGE CONGRATS to Mike for one of the most successful investments in venture history. Seeded Groq, now a **$20B** cash exit!! Anmol Maini / @anmolm_ : being the sole lead of a company's first round of capital infusion that ends up getting acquired* for $20b must feel incredible brown boys stay winning in 2025 [image] Max Weinbach / @mweinbach : Nvidia/Groq makes a ton of sense This gets Nvidia the IP they need to bypass CoWoS and HBM for a fast inference focused chip, and use NVLink for better chip to chip interconnect of the LPU This actually makes a ton of sense Dev Shah / @0xdevshah : Nvidia paid 3X Groq's September valuation to acquire it. This is strategically nuclear. Every AI lab was GPU dependent, creating massive concentration risk. Google broke free with TPUs for internal use, proving the “Nvidia or nothing” narrative was false. This didn't just [image] Steve Jang / @stevejang : $20B key team acquihire + license. Smart to get TPU know-how in house. Playing go, not chess now. [image] Jeffrey Emanuel / @doodlestein : Crazy that the FTC forced iRobot/Roomba into bankruptcy rather than let Amazon rescue them, but now it's ok for Nvidia to completely neutralize Groq as a potential competitor for $20b. [image] Ian Kar / @iankar_ : One of the best takes on Nvidia-Grok I've read so far Ian Kar / @iankar_ : Back of the envelope math but owning 30% at seed and roughly 50% dilution (aggressive since they reinvested$ gives Chamath 15% of a $20B exit aka $3b Mark Heaps / @lifebypixels : I spent years giving blood, sweat, tears, and had at least 2 emergency surgeries while at @GroqInc. The outpouring of messages today have been crazy and all I can say is I have no idea what any of this looks like going forward. I've always said the tech is great. More to come. @theo : Not quite. Looks like NVIDIA poached the Groq founder. Another weird licensing company gutting, similar to Meta x Scale and Google x Windsurf [image] @zephyr_z9 : Groq's offerings are well-suited for prefill and will shine in the era of disaggregated prefill and decode Will regulators allow the acquisition?? @levelsio : Why @nvidia acquihiring @Groq for $20B is so interesting: It looks like a direct (and fast!) reaction by Nvidia to Google successfully using its own TPU chips for training AI models and inference (generating AI content) Because until recently, they used mostly Nvidia's GPUs...they just hired the guy who co-created the TPU at Google, which is the chip that has just recently made Google independent of Nvidia's GPUs (which made Google's stock go up and Nvidia's stock go down) I'm impressed by the speed of how things develop in AI, everyone's acting really strategic and smart and so fast! Karma / @0xkrma : I think the Groq acquisition by Nvidia is mostly a play by Jensen to get Chamath and David Sacks in his pocket so that they lobby for lenient export controls. @kakashiii111 : I would not be surprised if Jensen already knows this will not pass regulatory approval. This acquisition attempt may serve another purpose: delaying Groq's progress and weakening competition while they are kept in a “preparing to be acquired” limbo. Like a whale swallowing a fish only to release it later, but in the meantime, the fish has lost its school. Ben Bajarin / @benbajarin : On the NVIDIA Groq deal not entirely sure what is going on now but this is a very odd arrangement. https://groq.com/... Dylan Patel / @dylan522p : Damn even Nvidia is tax loss harvesting Tis the season I guess Sheel Mohnot / @pitdesi : I would love to know what the bidding war for this was like. There had to be a bunch of suitors Company closed a series C extension early 2024 at around $1B, amazing mark for those guys [image] Matthew Zeitlin / @mattzeitlin : So does a a $20 billion non-exclusive licensing agreement + hiring key staff count as a merger for the purpose of investment banking league label @boringbiz_ : Chamath after making $4B from a seed investment in Groq (just announced $20B sale to NVIDIA) One of the best venture outcomes of all time [image] Ben Bajarin / @benbajarin : Also, announce on Christmas Eve and nothing from NVIDIA means they didn't want to make a big deal of this. M.G. Siegler / @mgsiegler : A Christmas Eve Hackquisition! 🎁 @peer_rich : these licensing acquihire deals always feel so fishy to me i guess regulators made real acquisitions too scary congrats to Groq team either way! @trace_cohen : WOH WAIT Nvidia just windsurfed Groq!? Hire and license strikes again! Hahaha No way they could legally buy them any other way. Damn.... [image] @suhail : Congrats @JonathanRoss321 Some random night I sat next to Jonathan at dinner and listened to him answer every question about Groq. So I tried asking much harder technical questions just to see how far we could go down the rabbit hole. At the end, I was just blown away by his depth of understanding. Did whatever I could to put my measly sum of money in investing. It's no surprise this is happening. Smarter that Jensen is doing it. Tyler Hogge / @thogge : It appears groq will return over $4b to social capital and @chamath I don't know how big the fund was, but it's safe to say this is one of the best venture outcomes of all time. Unbelievable. Power laws rule everything around me. @iancutress : Looks like @NVIDIA just extracted @Groq's employees and a non-exclusive hardware license to bring it into NVLink for $20B. @Groq remains running GroqCloud, but everyone of note joins NVIDIA, including CTO and architects. What is going on? (a) If they were acquiring for the middle-east business, I'd kinda get it. Or just an acquihire - expensive though. Groq's lead architect joined NV a couple years ago. (b) If they wanted to remove a competitor, expensive for a minor player comparitively (c) There's that much cash burning a hole at NV? @zephyr_z9 : Regulators wouldn't have allowed a $20B acquistion Max Weinbach / @mweinbach : Groq LPU moves all of the weights from HBM to the SRAM memory on the accelerator die. On Global Foundry 14nm, that's a 725mm die with 256MB of cache If you move that same die to TSMC, that shrinks to roughly 225mm with the same specs but also lowers power The SRAM speed is 10x Giuseppe Cicatelli / @cicatelligiusep : Echoing @chamath's heartfelt reflection—what an incredible nearly-decade journey As an investor in @GroqInc I'm deeply grateful to @JonathanRoss321 for his visionary genius (father of the TPU and builder of Groq's breakthrough inference tech) and for assembling such a @buccocapital : @BenBajarin ... Merry Christmas to the remaining Groq employees Yuchen Jin / @yuchenj_uw : Wow, so it's basically an acqui-hire. Nvidia just picked up Groq's co-founders, including Jonathan, the co-creator of Google TPUs. Similar to the Meta <-> Scale AI (Alexander Wang) and Google <-> Windsurf deals. [image] Shaun Maguire / @shaunmmaguire : @chamath @JonathanRoss321 Huge congrats to you and the Groq team! A legendary milestone for all Logan Kilpatrick / @officiallogank : @JonathanRoss321 Congrats to you and the Groq team, the world needs more compute, onwards!!! @highyieldharry : Bad Christmas news. Unfortunately, Chamath led the initial funding & then the convertible notes in 2017 & 2018, so he just hit the lottery on this sale. Ben Pouladian / @benitoz : This wasn't an acquisition It was smarter Nvidia licensed Groq's inference tech non-exclusively while pulling the brains in-house Avoids antitrust locks up know-how kills a future rival without buying the company Offense disguised as partnership Congrats @sundeep @GroqInc [image] @groqinc : Groq has entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Nvidia for Groq's inference technology. GroqCloud will continue to operate without interruption. Learn more here: https://groq.com/... Max Weinbach / @mweinbach : Nvidia DID NOT acquire Groq, contrary to the CNBC report It's inference technology licensing and a few Groq execs will be joining Nvidia. Groq will still be a separate company. https://groq.com/... [image] Cory Weinberg / @coryweinberg : The AI startup exit winners of 2025 are Groq, Scale AI, and CoreWeave - 3 companies that a lot of VCs avoided. LinkedIn: Mukund Mohan : NVIDIA is buying Groq — Before you comment that this is a “partnership” I can tell you BS. This is a back door “avoid anti trust” acquisition … Emil Protalinski : Nvidia is not acquiring its competitor, Groq. — Antitrust makes AI deals complicated, so let me explain. … Bluesky: Dare Obasanjo / @carnage4life : Nvidia just acquihired Groq's senior leadership team for $20B in a licensing deal that's become the norm in the AI space. — Just like Windsurf -> Google & Inflection AI -> Microsoft, they get the benefits of an acquisition without antitrust woes. — I wonder how much Google TPU pressure played a part?
Today we close this almost decade chapter and Jonathan starts a new one with nVidia. I can't thank him enough. Sometimes it's simply better to be lucky than good and be fortunate enough to work with great people and follow them into battle. That is me here. Jonathan was not o…
Yup. This was a defensive move. It's better to buy out and neutralize the threat than to allow it to take root. Nvidia could build the same thing, but they didn't do it at the time that Groq did.
Big Tech has a new playbook on how to acquire startups w/o triggering anti-trust acquisition: call it a licensing deal... while all key staff from the company (founders, key folks also join. Leave a zombie company behind. Google did it with Windsurf & Character, Meta with Scale
So the other big thing: not sure how Nvidia can both say TPU's aren't a big deal and also acquire the father of TPU's' company. Which then leads me to wonder whether Michael Burry was right after all
Is this just another shitty Windsurf pseudo-acquisition that leaves employees high and dry? I guess it's an antitrust workaround, but important for us to know how the economics impact the exiting management vs. employees who stay. [image]
there's another “only in America” episode to be written around the outcomes of Groq and Graphcore similar thesis that new silicon needed to power ai breakthroughs neither hit rev scale to continue on their own vs nvidia/tpu but one had pro-tech gov insiders end of story
After a call with Jonathan Ross, the founder of @GroqInc a little while ago - I was absolutely convinced I was speaking to a very very rare genius. Accordingly I wrote the biggest cheque I could and invested into Groq. No surprise to read this headline today. Congrats Jon + [imag…
I'm very bullish on NVIDIA Groq is by far my favorite company in the inference game. Been writing and talking about them since inception. congrats to @JonathanRoss321 and the entire @GroqInc team on this mega deal. [image]
the competitive pressures having Groq inside Nvidia to other chip vendors will lead to intense competition on inference chips. And we all win from that to some extent.
If this is true, this would automatically validate two things - 1. TPUs have really made Nvidia acknowledge custom AI accelerators to be a valid threat. Inference costs are real and GPUs need supplemental support to make the end-to-end serving feasible. 2. More importantly,
For the first time in 15+ years I actually think in 2026 we may see a robust M&A environment. Buyers will want to take advantage of inflated equity values to do deals and think it may spill over outside of AI.
great call by @SemiAnalysis_ — anybody who knows anything about AI chips knows groq's first gen chips aren't competitive but maybe their upcoming chips might have been able to threaten nvidia?
I doubt it will pass regulatory approval. Nothing to be excited about. Oh, and remember when Nvidia and everyone told you that TPUs were not a threat to Nvidia? Well... [image]
So many bad takes on Groq as if its LPU is some magical new architecture or a TPU for hire. Groq's micro architecture does not matter. The *only* reason Groq has any traction is because it bet on SRAM. Without SRAM, there's no speed advantage, no PMF, no demand, and no
I agree this is a big deal, although for $20 billion NVIDIA got a non-exclusive licensing agreement for inference technology, and @GroqInc remains a separate company!
Nvidia seems to be utilizing the same structure as other notable acquisitions in AI this year to avoid antitrust scrutiny. I wrote about how this works here. https://medium.com/...
Huge. Jensen buys @GroqInc for $20B cash.. @chamath clears > $1B net on the initial seed / A money they invested at $30M Val in 2016. 150X after dilution. Congrats to @JonathanRoss321 and team. Very bullish for NVIDIA to own this...
Google will never sell TPUs. The moment Google sells TPUs at scale, they transform their architectural advantage into a commodity. Google's internal teams have first-order claims on TPU capacity because those workloads directly generate revenue and strategic moats. Any TPU sold
Nvidia will acquire assets and key talent from chipmaking startup Groq for $20B (officially called a “non-exclusive licensing agreement). Groq co-founder and CEO Jonathan Ross was lead designer and artchitect for the first generation of Google's TPU chips. He'll join Nvidia [imag…
If true, this is huge: -reaffirms XPU thesis -helps $NVDA hedge against XPU -solid hardware and software teams -not just because I was an early investor 😉
Dylan Patel speculates that Jensen may have pursued the acquisition because he saw something in Groq's 2nd- or 3rd-generation chips. Do you think Jensen viewed Groq's next-generation chips as a real threat to NVIDIA—strong enough to compete—and moved to eliminate a potential [ima…
What a fantastic memory to read and outcome for the @GroqInc team and @chamath, @sundeep and @GavinSherry. Congrats guys - you all are living proof that cream rises to the top!
I think Nvidia acquired Groq *now*, to hedge against DRAM prices and capacity. If you didn't know, DRAM prices exploded recently. While nvidia GPUs are HBM (i.e DRAM heavy), Groq chips rely on in-chip SRAM. There are architectural and compiler-dependent ways to do this, so likely…
Christmas came early for us this year! As early investors in @GroqInc, what a privilege to see this incredible journey to @nvidia - the biggest company in the world making their largest acquisition! Massive congrats to @sundeep, @GavinSherry, @n1th1nrao, and the entire Groq [imag…
If NVIDIA implements Groq properly, and they have a stunningly great M&A integration history, it will result in trillions of additional market cap given the worlds insatiable demand for faster AI inference. This reminds me of NVIDIA's purchase of Mellanox in 2019 ($6.9B, also
Nothing more enjoyable to do on Xmas eve :) Some of Nvidia's deal term with Groq and how Groq's tech helps Nvidia with its chip offering👇🏻 w/ @waynema @MilesKruppa @Katie_Roof [image]
People criticize @chamath so much. This is a stellar memo. He's an extremely sharp and talented investor. Like Hummingbird, FF, and others, he proves right again that venture is an asset class of people: “Special person: Yes” “It's a team bet” [image]
Incredibly proud seed investor. When a random intro you make 9 years ago turns into $20B 🤯🤯. Lesson: always try to be helpful! So proud of @sundeep and the whole squad. Wow!! What's the valuable company in the world makes their biggest acquisition ever 😱
Dems should recognize that Silicon Valley has hacked M&A, so Lina Khan can block struggling airlines from merging but Mark Zuckerberg can get the key people and IP from the next Instagram with or without a formal merger.
being the sole lead of a company's first round of capital infusion that ends up getting acquired* for $20b must feel incredible brown boys stay winning in 2025 [image]
Nvidia/Groq makes a ton of sense This gets Nvidia the IP they need to bypass CoWoS and HBM for a fast inference focused chip, and use NVLink for better chip to chip interconnect of the LPU This actually makes a ton of sense
Nvidia paid 3X Groq's September valuation to acquire it. This is strategically nuclear. Every AI lab was GPU dependent, creating massive concentration risk. Google broke free with TPUs for internal use, proving the “Nvidia or nothing” narrative was false. This didn't just [image]
Crazy that the FTC forced iRobot/Roomba into bankruptcy rather than let Amazon rescue them, but now it's ok for Nvidia to completely neutralize Groq as a potential competitor for $20b. [image]
I spent years giving blood, sweat, tears, and had at least 2 emergency surgeries while at @GroqInc. The outpouring of messages today have been crazy and all I can say is I have no idea what any of this looks like going forward. I've always said the tech is great. More to come.
Why @nvidia acquihiring @Groq for $20B is so interesting: It looks like a direct (and fast!) reaction by Nvidia to Google successfully using its own TPU chips for training AI models and inference (generating AI content) Because until recently, they used mostly Nvidia's GPUs...the…
I think the Groq acquisition by Nvidia is mostly a play by Jensen to get Chamath and David Sacks in his pocket so that they lobby for lenient export controls.
I would not be surprised if Jensen already knows this will not pass regulatory approval. This acquisition attempt may serve another purpose: delaying Groq's progress and weakening competition while they are kept in a “preparing to be acquired” limbo. Like a whale swallowing a f…
I would love to know what the bidding war for this was like. There had to be a bunch of suitors Company closed a series C extension early 2024 at around $1B, amazing mark for those guys [image]
Congrats @JonathanRoss321 Some random night I sat next to Jonathan at dinner and listened to him answer every question about Groq. So I tried asking much harder technical questions just to see how far we could go down the rabbit hole. At the end, I was just blown away by his de…
It appears groq will return over $4b to social capital and @chamath I don't know how big the fund was, but it's safe to say this is one of the best venture outcomes of all time. Unbelievable. Power laws rule everything around me.
Looks like @NVIDIA just extracted @Groq's employees and a non-exclusive hardware license to bring it into NVLink for $20B. @Groq remains running GroqCloud, but everyone of note joins NVIDIA, including CTO and architects. What is going on? (a) If they were acquiring for the midd…
Groq LPU moves all of the weights from HBM to the SRAM memory on the accelerator die. On Global Foundry 14nm, that's a 725mm die with 256MB of cache If you move that same die to TSMC, that shrinks to roughly 225mm with the same specs but also lowers power The SRAM speed is 10x
Echoing @chamath's heartfelt reflection—what an incredible nearly-decade journey As an investor in @GroqInc I'm deeply grateful to @JonathanRoss321 for his visionary genius (father of the TPU and builder of Groq's breakthrough inference tech) and for assembling such a
Wow, so it's basically an acqui-hire. Nvidia just picked up Groq's co-founders, including Jonathan, the co-creator of Google TPUs. Similar to the Meta <-> Scale AI (Alexander Wang) and Google <-> Windsurf deals. [image]
Bad Christmas news. Unfortunately, Chamath led the initial funding & then the convertible notes in 2017 & 2018, so he just hit the lottery on this sale.
This wasn't an acquisition It was smarter Nvidia licensed Groq's inference tech non-exclusively while pulling the brains in-house Avoids antitrust locks up know-how kills a future rival without buying the company Offense disguised as partnership Congrats @sundeep @GroqInc [image]
Groq has entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Nvidia for Groq's inference technology. GroqCloud will continue to operate without interruption. Learn more here: https://groq.com/...
Nvidia DID NOT acquire Groq, contrary to the CNBC report It's inference technology licensing and a few Groq execs will be joining Nvidia. Groq will still be a separate company. https://groq.com/... [image]
Nvidia just acquihired Groq's senior leadership team for $20B in a licensing deal that's become the norm in the AI space. — Just like Windsurf -> Google & Inflection AI -> Microsoft, they get the benefits of an acquisition without antitrust woes. — I wonder how much Google TP…