Groq raised a $640M Series D round at a $2.8B valuation
Groq, a leader in AI inference technology, has secured $640 million in Series D funding at a $2.8 billion valuation. The company aims to scale its GroqCloud platform by deploying over 108,000 LPUs by Q1 2025 to accelerate innovation in AI inference computing.
Groq, the company behind the leading AI inference platform GroqCloud which enables developers everywhere to build blazing-fast AI applications, has raised $640 million in a Series D funding round led by BlackRock Private Equity Partners, and supported by new, existing, and strategic investors, including Neuberger Berman, Type One Ventures, Cisco Investments, Global Brain’s KDDI Open Innovation Fund III, and Samsung Catalyst Fund. The funding round placed Groq at a $2.8 billion valuation.
Recently, the evergrowing demand for AI-optimized computing resources has led Groq to experience a surge in demand for its vertically integrated inference platform, with a community of over 360,000 developers building applications based on openly available models such as Meta's Llama 3.1 or Mistral AI's Mixtral. To cope with the growing demand, Groq plans to deploy over 108,000 of its proprietary language processing units (LPUs), manufactured by GlobalFoundries, by Q1, 2025. The company claims this feat is "the largest AI inference compute deployment of any non-hyperscaler." The company also plans to use the funding to build new features and add new models to its platform.
In parallel to the Series D announcement, Groq also shared it would boost its leadership team by welcoming Stuart Pann, a former senior executive at Intel and HP, as Chief Operations Officer (COO); and Meta's Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun as a technical advisor.
