AI chipmaker Groq confirms $650M raise, re-staffs after Nvidia’s $20B not-acqui-hire deal
AI chipmaker Groq confirms $650M raise, re-staffs after Nvidia’s $20B not-acqui-hire deal
AI 芯片制造商 Groq 确认完成 6.5 亿美元融资，在英伟达 200 亿美元“非收购式招聘”交易后重组团队
What does an AI company do after one of those not-acqui-hire deals, where a rival pays investors a hefty IP “licensing” fee while poaching its critical talent? For AI chipmaker Groq, the answer appears to be raise more money from investors — who were said to have profited handsomely after a deal with Nvidia in December — hire more talent, and pivot.
当一家 AI 公司遭遇那种“非收购式招聘”（not-acqui-hire）交易——即竞争对手向投资者支付高额知识产权“许可费”，同时挖走其核心人才——之后，它该怎么办？对于 AI 芯片制造商 Groq 来说，答案似乎是：从投资者那里筹集更多资金（据称这些投资者在去年 12 月与英伟达的交易中获利颇丰），招聘更多人才，并进行业务转型。
On Monday, Groq announced a new $650 million funding round, confirming earlier reports. The raise comes roughly six months after Nvidia signed a non-exclusive licensing agreement for Groq’s technology and hired away founder and CEO Jonathan Ross, president Sunny Madra, and other employees. Groq did not disclose its new valuation. It was last valued at $6.9 billion following a $750 million round in September.
周一，Groq 宣布完成新一轮 6.5 亿美元融资，证实了此前的报道。此次融资距离英伟达签署 Groq 技术非独家许可协议并挖走创始人兼 CEO Jonathan Ross、总裁 Sunny Madra 及其他员工大约过去了六个月。Groq 未披露其最新估值。该公司在去年 9 月完成 7.5 亿美元融资后的估值曾达到 69 亿美元。
Ross, who came from Google, was known in the AI chip world for helping create Google’s AI chip, the Tensor Processing Unit. He teamed up with another Google engineer, Doug Wightman, to launch Groq a decade ago. Wightman stayed on after the Nvidia deal and became CEO. Groq created a chip it called a language processing unit (LPU), used for inference, and sold it as part of a cloud service or an on-premises hardware cluster.
出身于谷歌的 Ross 在 AI 芯片界以参与创建谷歌 AI 芯片——张量处理单元（TPU）而闻名。十年前，他与另一位谷歌工程师 Doug Wightman 联手创立了 Groq。在英伟达交易后，Wightman 选择留任并出任 CEO。Groq 开发了一种名为语言处理单元（LPU）的芯片，用于推理任务，并将其作为云服务或本地硬件集群的一部分进行销售。
With Nvidia now owning the IP for LPUs, the GPU giant announced its own hardware cluster, the Nvidia Groq 3 LPX inference hardware system, at its GTC event in March. In response, Groq has pivoted to its neocloud business, it said. That business had been run by Madra after Groq acquired his AI data analytics company Definitive Intelligence, in 2024. It has grown to 13 data centers across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and APAC and is serving over five million developers and thousands of AI companies, processing trillions of tokens each week, the company says.
由于英伟达现在拥有了 LPU 的知识产权，这家 GPU 巨头在 3 月的 GTC 大会上发布了自己的硬件集群——Nvidia Groq 3 LPX 推理硬件系统。对此，Groq 表示已转型至其“neocloud”业务。该业务在 Groq 于 2024 年收购 Madra 的 AI 数据分析公司 Definitive Intelligence 后一直由他负责。据该公司称，该业务已扩展至北美、欧洲、中东和亚太地区的 13 个数据中心，服务超过 500 万开发者和数千家 AI 公司，每周处理数万亿个 Token。
Groq has also been hiring replacement execs. It added Alan Rice as COO, previously at xAI and Meta, after a career in the U.S. Navy. It also added an entrepreneurial duo, Sinclair Schuller, who joins as CTO, and Rakesh Malhotra as CPO. They previously worked together at Apprenda, an enterprise cloud software company founded by Schuller; they then co-founded Nuvalence, a software-engineering firm acquired by EY in 2024. Malhotra previously spent about a decade working on Microsoft’s cloud products.
Groq 也在招聘接替的高管。公司聘请了曾在 xAI 和 Meta 工作、并有美国海军服役经历的 Alan Rice 担任 COO。此外，公司还引入了一对创业搭档：Sinclair Schuller 出任 CTO，Rakesh Malhotra 出任 CPO。他们此前曾在 Schuller 创立的企业云软件公司 Apprenda 共事；随后共同创立了软件工程公司 Nuvalence，该公司于 2024 年被安永（EY）收购。Malhotra 此前曾在微软云产品部门工作了约十年。
Whether Groq can succeed after almost selling itself depends on how competitive its inference cloud can remain, now that the key hardware IP is shared with Nvidia. Certainly, it has a shot. Inference-related tech is an area experiencing tremendous demand (and VC investment). But it’s also seeing increasing innovation and competition. Still, others seem to have survived these sorts of deals. Scale AI’s CEO Jason Droege told Forbes that business has rebounded after Meta did a $14.3 billion not-acqui-hire about a year ago, and that the company is on track to do $1 billion in revenue. In the big-money game of AI, anything seems possible.
在几乎被收购之后，Groq 能否成功，取决于其推理云业务在关键硬件知识产权与英伟达共享的情况下，还能保持多强的竞争力。当然，它仍有机会。推理相关技术是一个需求（及风投投入）巨大的领域，但同时也面临着日益激烈的创新和竞争。不过，其他公司似乎也曾从这类交易中幸存下来。Scale AI 的 CEO Jason Droege 告诉《福布斯》，在 Meta 大约一年前进行了一笔 143 亿美元的“非收购式招聘”后，公司业务已经反弹，目前正朝着 10 亿美元营收的目标迈进。在 AI 这个烧钱的游戏中，一切皆有可能。