Nvidia lands ex-Google AI chip architect in $20 billion Groq deal

Saddam, Nvidia paying 20 billion to license Grock's technology and hire its top executives. That's nearly 3x its most recent valuation from just 3 months ago. Now, Grock, it makes chips purpose built for inference, running AI models faster and cheaper than GPUs. Its founder,

Jonathan Ross, helped create Google's TPU, which has become one of Nvidia's most credible competitive threats. And now he is joining Nvidia instead. Now, the trip start up wasn't looking to sell. Nvidia approached them. The CEO, president and senior leaders are all going over,

though Grock Cloud will keep operating independently. It's another Aqua hire, structure to avoid regulatory review. The same playbook Nvidia used with Infabrica in September and that Meta, Google, and Microsoft have used to scoop up AI talent. Now, Grock reportedly slashed its

2025 revenue projections by 75% earlier this year. So, Nvidia, it is paying a premium for a company struggling to hit its targets, but it has $60 billion in cash to deploy and this steal locks up the minds who build both Grock's inference technology and Google's AI chip while

keeping it away from Broadcom and AMD.