Nvidia is making a strategic move to lock down the future of artificial intelligence. On Wednesday, chip startup Groq announced that Nvidia agreed to license its technology and hire away its top leadership. This includes founder Jonathan Ross, a veteran who helped start Google’s AI chip program, along with President Sunny Madra and a team of engineers.
This deal follows a specific playbook that Big Tech loves right now. Instead of buying a company outright—which often invites harsh scrutiny from government regulators—giants like Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon pay for the technology and hire the founders. Nvidia is doing the same here. By structuring the deal as a “non-exclusive” license, they avoid a full merger while still gaining the talent and tech they need.
Groq will continue to exist as an independent company. Simon Edwards is stepping in as the new CEO, and the startup says its cloud business remains operational. While rumors swirled about a potential $20 billion cash buyout, neither side confirmed those numbers.
For Nvidia, this is about solving a specific problem. The company dominates the market for training AI models, but the real battle is shifting to inference. Inference is the process by which an AI model actually processes data to answer a user’s question. Groq specializes in this area. Their chips use on-chip SRAM, which avoids the bottlenecks of traditional memory and significantly speeds up chatbot responses.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang spent much of 2025 arguing that his company could lead in inference just as it does in training. Bringing the Groq team on board proves he is serious about beating rivals like AMD and Cerebras.
Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon noted that this “hiring and licensing” model helps keep the appearance of competition alive for antitrust officials. He also noted that Huang currently has a strong relationship with the Trump administration, which could help the deal proceed smoothly despite the massive talent transfer. Groq, which saw its valuation jump to $6.9 billion last year, now has to navigate a future without its original visionary.
