Company intelligence
As of August 17, 2026, Groq was last valued at $3.5B (August 2026 Growth) and has raised at least $2.4B in equity across 4 sourced funding rounds.
Groq designs custom LPU (Language Processing Unit) chips and runs an AI inference cloud optimized for fast, low-cost large language model inference.
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Groq is a semiconductors company, based in Mountain View, California, USA, founded 2016 by Jonathan Ross, Douglas Wightman.
| Date | Round | Amount | Valuation | Lead investors | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 17, 2026 | Growth | $350M | $3.5Bpost-money | WithNvidia | TechCrunch |
| Jun 22, 2026 | Growth | $650M | — | TechCrunch | |
| Sep 17, 2025 | Growth | $750M | $6.9Bpost-money | TechCrunch | |
| Aug 5, 2024 | Series D | $640M | $2.8Bpost-money | TechCrunch |
Equity only. “Equity raised” above sums the rounds with a dated, linked source; rumored rounds, tender offers and secondary sales are listed but not counted, and debt financing is listed separately.
| Date | Event | Amount | Valuation | Investors | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 10, 2026 | acquisition | ~$20B | — | Bloomberg | |
| Dec 2025 | Acquihire/licensing | $20B | — | NvidiaLead | TechCrunch |
| As of | Value | Method | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aug 17, 2026 | $3.5B | Reported | TechCrunch |
| Sep 2025 | $6.9B | Reported | Bloomberg |
| Aug 5, 2024 | $2.8B | Derived | TechCrunch |
The Justice Department is investigating whether Nvidia structured its nearly $20 billion licensing-and-hire deal for AI chip startup Groq specifically to dodge a formal antitrust merger review.
Named August rounds for chips, energy and defense hardware -- Castelion, Etched, Groq and Base Power -- total more than $3.2 billion, versus roughly $1.1 billion for consumer and enterprise AI application startups covered on Pulse the same month.
Nvidia said its Groq-derived LPX inference racks will be online by the end of the year, giving the roughly $20 billion Groq deal a concrete deployment timeline for the first time since named customers surfaced earlier this week.
Nvidia has announced new customers for its Vera CPU and Groq-derived LPX inference racks, the first named commercial evidence behind its roughly $20 billion inference bet.
Early benchmarks for Nvidia's Groq-derived LPU inference hardware are out, alongside new customer announcements for its Vera CPU and Groq LPX racks.
Groq raised $350 million at a $3.5 billion valuation, down from $6.9 billion last September, as it completes a pivot from AI chipmaker to inference cloud provider after Nvidia hired its founder in a $20 billion licensing deal.
AI inference chipmaker Groq raised $650 million from investors including Infinitum and Disruptive to scale its LPU-based inference cloud, betting that purpose-built silicon can undercut GPUs on the cost and speed of serving large models. The round is part of a week dominated by bets on the inference layer, from Baseten's $1.5B to AI-networking deals.
AI chipmaker Groq confirmed a $650 million funding round and a near-total leadership rebuild, six months after Nvidia signed a roughly $20 billion non-exclusive licensing deal that also hired away Groq's founder-CEO Jonathan Ross, president Sunny Madra and other senior staff. The round -- led by Dallas firm Disruptive and hedge fund Infinitum -- bankrolls Groq's pivot from selling chips to running an AI inference 'neocloud.'
Groq was last valued at $3.5B in its August 2026 Growth, according to TechCrunch (August 17, 2026).
Groq has raised at least $2.4B in equity across 4 sourced funding rounds tracked by Value Add VC. The most recent was a $350M Growth in August 2026 at a $3.5B post-money valuation, reported by TechCrunch. Debt financing, tender offers and secondary sales are not counted. TechCrunch puts total funding at $3B+ (as of Sept 2025) (September 2025).
Lead investors in Groq's sourced funding rounds include Disruptive, Infinitum and BlackRock. Per round: its August 2026 Growth was led by Disruptive; its June 2026 Growth was led by Disruptive and Infinitum; its September 2025 Growth was led by Disruptive.
Groq was founded in 2016 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California, USA, according to TechCrunch.
Figures are labelled Reported (a source states it), Estimated, Derived (computed from other facts) or Rumored (in talks / unconfirmed). Rumors never replace a confirmed figure. Each figure keeps its own as-of date; history is preserved rather than overwritten.
