NVIDIA's chipmaking rival Groq to raise $600M at $6B valuation
What's the story
AI chip start-up Groq is in advanced talks to raise $600 million at a valuation of nearly $6 billion, Bloomberg has reported. The deal is yet to be finalized and the terms could change. If successful, this would mark a significant increase from the company's previous valuation of $2.8 billion after raising $640 million in August 2024.
Investment
New funding round being led by Disruptive
The upcoming funding round is being led by Austin-based firm Disruptive. In the previous round, Blackrock led the investment with participation from Neuberger Berman, Type One Ventures, Cisco, KDDI, and Samsung Catalyst Fund. Groq was founded by Jonathan Ross, a former Google employee who worked on its Tensor Processing Unit chip.
Alliances
Strategic partnerships with Bell Canada and Meta
The latest funding talks come on the heels of Groq's strategic partnerships with Bell Canada and Meta. In May, the start-up announced an exclusive deal with Bell Canada to power the telco's large AI infrastructure project. A month earlier, it had teamed up with Meta to provide AI infrastructure for accelerating Llama 4 inference. These collaborations highlight Groq's growing footprint in the AI chip industry.