I don't really get the value proposition of groq as a user, the performance is really poor for the token price. Data centres on the other hand are becoming a commodity, and I don't see any reason a priori to invest in groq specifically for something like that.

• today at 6:02 AM

• bluegatty

  today at 3:06 AM

  Groq is considerably faster and better at inference, they have a totally superior product to Nvidia for inference based tasks, which will be the dominant concern in the future.

  Plausibly, take all the Nvidia hype and multiply that by a factor and that's what 'Groq' could be worth.

  And there is no real commodification - there's Nvidia, Cerebras, Groq ... not many otheres.

  • 7thpower

    today at 3:20 AM

    Define “totally superior”?

    Was this comment created using quantized llama 3?

    I love Groq, but across every single line break in your post there is a glaring issue that is easy to refute with in 15 seconds, even without 300t/s of throughput.

    • bluegatty

      today at 4:31 AM

      You wasted all of your commentary on snark and sadly unfunny humour, and yet still managed to add nothing.

      Groq is more performant for the growing categories of inference-based tasks, wherein Nvidia's advantage in inference depends bulk/batch processing which will make up a smaller category over time, in relative terms.

      The future of AI Silicon is inference, and the cost structure of AI data centres is constrained around the current necessity to have 'high GPU utilization' otherwise, the cost / amortization of the chips doesn't work out.

      That cost structure is a limitation of Nvidia architecture.

      Groq serves a lot faster, and without the limiting batching requirement, which opens hosting arrangements common in most classical hosting scenarios aka without necessarily the high utilization requirements.

      Groq has bespoke hardware, lack of CUDA, much lower memory desnsity obviously and they don't have the deep distribution networks and leverage over TSMC that Nvidia has - but pound for pound, were we to be able to 'fire up a server' for our inference needs, it would be Groq, not Nvidia that we'd turn to.

      Were they not a later market entrant and didn't have those barriers to entry, they'd be gigantic.

      • dnautics

        today at 4:41 AM

        is groq still using 6 racks to serve Llama3-70B or is that old news?

        • today at 4:48 AM

  • TurdF3rguson

    today at 3:20 AM

    > they have a totally superior product to Nvidia for inference based tasks

    They're not really competing with Nvidia because 1) Nvidia owns their chips now, and 2) Nvidia is not really an inference provider.

    • bluegatty

      today at 4:33 AM

      Groq is a slicon maker, the inference provider stuff is a path to market, it's not really the reflection of their market potential.

      Nvidia doesn't own them or all their IP now, we don't quite know the terms of the deal.

      • TurdF3rguson

        today at 5:17 AM

        AFAIK the terms were the chip-making + talent stuff went to Nvidia, and the api provider stuff gets to keep existing separately.

  • digitaltrees

    today at 4:13 AM

    Haha. Groq is trash. It can’t be used for anything where reliable work is required.

    Groq lasted how long in the social contract experiment? Libertarians always forget that rules and government aren’t tyrannical they are the mechanism to ensure bullies don’t destroy everyone’s freedom.

    • Renaud

      today at 4:37 AM

      This is not about xAi.

      • digitaltrees

        today at 5:09 AM

        Ahh, well I stand corrected. But Groq sold out where are our revolutionary chips? locked behind a monopoly. :)

    • SonOfKyuss

      today at 4:40 AM

      Groq != grok

My company had a really terrible experience trying to use Groq, and I would NOT recommend anyone use their service if you need reliability. So many random errors, so many silly quirks.

• mdp2021

  today at 5:56 AM

  Are you sure your post is about

  > Groq, the AI chip company company that was acquired by Nvidia in December of last year, is raising $650M

  ? Could you provide details?

as soon as i saw they switched to "call us for quotes" for the new models, i knew they are over.

what's the confusion. Groq offers a fast inference solution that is currently unique (why do you think Nvidia paid $8 billion to end-run around the SEC to acquire the technology). This is good news as it ensures that Groq customers can can be assured continuity to use their service.

Do they have any good models yet?

• herrvogel-

  today at 4:16 AM

  It’s not X AI, that would be Grok with a ‘k’.

  • jrflowers

    today at 5:05 AM

    You pay them money to run models. Their website doesn’t list them as offering any models that were released recently. For a “pay for inference” provider, questions like “do they have Deepseek or Qwen 2.6?” are germane

I’m confused by the confusion. Groq licensed their technology (sold part of their business) to Nvidia for a large amount of money and distributed the spoils to their investors. Seems quite normal? But then the Axios article says…

“Existing shareholders will receive the remaining cash distributions and then have the opportunity to invest into a new company”

New company? But Groq still exists and continued to exist.

“The bottom line: Don't be surprised if this becomes a new transaction template in the AI private markets.”

A transaction template? I don’t follow what was novel about this situation. The Meta not-acquisition-acquisition of Scale seems more novel.

I guess I feel like Zach’s confusion is because of the way Axios has presented what is happening to Groq. Looking at why actually happened with Groq, it seems like Axios are reporting it weird.

Unless Groq really is starting a new company in which case I am equally as confused.

edit: when announced last year it was announced as an asset acquisition https://www.cnbc.com/2025/12/24/nvidia-buying-ai-chip-startu...

• zachbee

  today at 3:09 AM

  The interesting thing here isn't "how, logistically, is the Groq corporate entity able to raise more money?". That's straightforward.

  Rather, the interesting thing and the topic of most of the article is "how, after Nvidia hired most of Groq's team and licensed all their IP, did Groq manage to convince investors to invest in the remaining corporate entity?"

  • fontain

    today at 3:15 AM

    I thought you wrote the convincing explanation:

    “One could argue that Groq’s datacenters alone could make them worth billions of dollars.”

    Groq is a successful datacenter business with a high-revenue cloud product. That’s a compelling investment in its own right, right?

    • Ardren

      today at 3:21 AM

      > Groq Launches European Data Center Footprint in Helsinki, Finland

      https://groq.com/newsroom/groq-launches-european-data-center...

      That sounds like they are renting racks in a Equinix data centre. Do Groq have 4 data centers worth billions?

• bluegatty

  today at 3:07 AM

  There's nothing normal at all about the Nvidia Groq deal, it's hard to read in terms of what it means. A straight licensing deal would have been easier to ingest.

  • fontain

    today at 3:10 AM

    I could be completely off the mark but I thought the non-exclusive license was necessary because Groq’s datacenter business uses the technology already? Nvidia acquired the assets but Groq needed to retain rights to use the technology for their own product.

    • bluegatty

      today at 4:36 AM

      The deal was probably structured the way it was due to concerns over regulatory approval.

      These 'we get your executives' type of deals - aka Windsurf - are new, weird thing in M&A.

    • wmf

      today at 3:17 AM

      They could have sold the IP then licensed it back. The nonexclusive part was purely a fig leaf to dodge antitrust.

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• dang

  today at 2:34 AM

  Please don't post shallow-indignant comments. The article raises an interesting question. If the discussion terminates in an angry cliché before it even gets started, that's a boring outcome.

  • ai_fry_ur_brain

    today at 2:42 AM

    Well dang, that's sort of my goal. I think the masses should be angry and should be highly polarized (regardless if its cliche) against the groups of people investing billions in chat bots while millions can't afford food and medicine.

    • appplication

      today at 2:50 AM

      I’ll also agree with you, this is not a topic that needs nuance, it’s as straightforward as fuck the billionaire class.

      If you want nuance, the obvious answer to this is that the rules that apply at our level do not apply to them. Raising money is an inevitability and does not require any fundamental basis other than the name behind it.

    • unmole

      today at 4:13 AM

      Take your middlebrow slacktivism elsewhere. HN is not the place for it.

• pezezin

  today at 2:35 AM

  [flagged]

Fraud. And insecure bois that wish they were Elon

• Renaud

  today at 4:38 AM

  Groq =/= Grok