{"id":39158,"date":"2025-12-31T00:39:14","date_gmt":"2025-12-31T00:39:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/nvidia-licenses-groqs-inferencing-chip-tech-and-hires-its-leaders\/"},"modified":"2025-12-31T00:39:14","modified_gmt":"2025-12-31T00:39:14","slug":"nvidia-licenses-groqs-inferencing-chip-tech-and-hires-its-leaders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/nvidia-licenses-groqs-inferencing-chip-tech-and-hires-its-leaders\/","title":{"rendered":"Nvidia licenses Groq\u2019s inferencing chip tech and hires its leaders"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nvidia has licensed intellectual property from inferencing chip designer Groq, and hired away some of its senior executives, but stopped short of an outright acquisition.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve taken a non-exclusive license to Groq\u2019s IP and have hired engineering talent from Groq\u2019s team to join us in our mission to provide world-leading accelerated computing technology,\u201d an Nvidia spokesman said Tuesday, via email. But, he said, \u201cWe haven\u2019t acquired Groq.\u201d<\/p>\n

Groq designs and sells chips optimized for AI inferencing. These chips, which Groq calls language processing units (LPUs), are lower-powered, lower-priced devices than the GPUs Nvidia designs and sells, which these days are primarily used for training AI models. As the AI market matures, and usage shifts from the creation of AI tools to their use, demand for devices optimized for inferencing is likely to grow.<\/p>\n

The company also rents out its chips, operating an inferencing-as-a-service business called GroqCloud<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Groq itself announced the deal and the executive moves on Dec. 24, saying \u201cit has entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Nvidia for Groq\u2019s inference technology<\/a>\u201d and that, as part fo the agreement, \u201cJonathan Ross, Groq\u2019s Founder, Sunny Madra, Groq\u2019s President, and other members of the Groq team will join Nvidia to help advance and scale the licensed technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

The deal could be worth as much as $20 billion, TechCrunch reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A way out of the memory squeeze?<\/h2>\n

There\u2019s tension throughout the supply chain for chips used for AI applications, leading to Nvidia\u2019s CFO reporting in its last earnings call that some of its chips are \u201csold out\u201d or \u201cfully utilized.\u201d One of the factors contributing to this identified by analysts is a shortage of high-bandwidth memory. Finding ways to make their AI operations less dependent on scarce memory chips is becoming a key objective for AI vendors and enterprise buyers alike.<\/p>\n

A significant difference between Groq\u2019s chip designs and Nvidia\u2019s is the type of memory each uses. Nvidia\u2019s fastest chips are designed to work with high-bandwidth memory, the price of which \u2013 like that of other fast memory technologies<\/a> \u2014 is soaring due to limited production capacity and rising demand in AI-related applications. Groq, meanwhile, integrates static RAM into its chip designs. It says SRAM is faster and less power-hungry than the dynamic RAM used by competing chip technologies \u2014 and another advantage is that it\u2019s not (yet) as scarce as the high-bandwidth memory or DDR5 DRAM used elsewhere. Licensing Groq\u2019s technology opens the way for Nvidia to diversify its memory sourcing.<\/p>\n

Not an acquisition<\/h2>\n

By structuring its relationship with Groq as an IP licensing deal, and hiring the engineers it is most interested in rather than buying their employer, Nvidia avoids taking on the GroqCloud service business just as it is reportedly stepping back from its own service business, DGX cloud, and restructuring it as an internal engineering service<\/a>. It could also escape much of the antitrust scrutiny that would have accompanied a full-on acquisition.<\/p>\n

Nvidia did not respond to questions about the names and roles of the former Groq executives it has hired.<\/p>\n

However, Groq\u2019s founder, Jonathan Ross<\/a>, reports on his LinkedIn profile that he is now chief software architect at Nvidia, while that of Groq\u2019s former president, Sunny Madra<\/a>, says he is now Nvidia\u2019s VP of hardware.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s left of Groq will be run by Simon Edwards<\/a>, formerly CFO at sales automation software vendor Conga. He joined Groq as CFO just three months ago.<\/p>\n

This article first appeared on Network World<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nvidia has licensed intellectual property from inferencing chip designer Groq, and hired away some of its senior executives, but stopped short of an outright acquisition. \u201cWe\u2019ve taken a non-exclusive license to Groq\u2019s IP and have hired engineering talent from Groq\u2019s team to join us in our mission to provide world-leading accelerated computing technology,\u201d an Nvidia […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39159,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tech"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-25 11:19:28","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39158"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39158\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gpnewswire.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}