NVIDIA eyes $20 billion Groq deal as AI chip race grows, report says

NVIDIA has agreed to acquire AI chip startup Groq in a cash deal valued at $20 billion, marking the largest acquisition in NVIDIA’s history and significantly expanding its presence in specialized AI accelerator hardware. The deal follows Groq’s recent $750 million funding round at a $6.9 billion valuation, which included major investors such as BlackRock, Samsung, and Cisco. The acquisition covers Groq’s core assets but excludes its Groq Cloud business. Groq, founded in 2016 by former Google engineers including CEO Jonathan Ross, focuses on low-latency inference chips designed to accelerate large language model tasks, positioning itself as a challenger to NVIDIA’s GPUs and Google’s TPUs. This acquisition underscores NVIDIA’s broader strategy to deepen its influence across the AI hardware ecosystem amid growing demand for AI inference hardware. NVIDIA’s cash reserves have grown substantially, reaching $60.6 billion by October 2023, enabling aggressive investments and partnerships, including a planned $100 billion investment in OpenAI and