Groq Inc. Raises $640 Million at $2.8B Valuation, Plans to Deploy 108,000 LPUs

Aug 5, 2024, 03:11 PM

Groq Inc. has announced a successful Series D funding round, raising $640 million at a valuation of approximately $2.8 billion. The funding round was led by BlackRock Private Equity Partners. Groq plans to use the funds to expand its capacity, hire exceptional talent, and accelerate the development of its next-generation language processing unit (LPU). The company aims to roll out more than 108,000 LPUs by March 2025 and handle half the world’s AI inference by the end of next year. Groq's LPU, also known as the Groq chip, is claimed to be faster and one-tenth the cost of conventional graphics processing units. The company has also onboarded Meta chief scientist Yann LeCun as a technical advisor. GroqCloud, a platform launched by the company, now has over 356,000 developers, with over 75% of the Fortune 100 represented. CEO Jonathan Ross expressed his aspiration to achieve these milestones by March 2024.