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Simon Edwards

Simon Edwards

Groq CFO, incoming CEO

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Nvidia's $20 billion Groq deal: the AI inference land grab

New Capabilities

Taking over as CEO of independent Groq entity

On Christmas Eve 2025, Nvidia paid $20 billion for Groq's assets—nearly triple the AI chip startup's $6.9 billion valuation from three months earlier. The deal brings Groq's founder Jonathan Ross, who created Google's original Tensor Processing Unit, and his breakthrough inference technology into Nvidia's fold. It's Nvidia's largest acquisition ever, nearly three times bigger than its $7 billion Mellanox purchase. By structuring the deal as a "non-exclusive licensing agreement" rather than an outright acquisition, Nvidia bypasses Hart-Scott-Rodino Act merger review requirements that trigger automatic FTC scrutiny—following Microsoft's 2024 playbook with Inflection AI. The deal's unusual structure has drawn immediate analyst warnings about "the fiction of competition" as Groq's leadership and technical talent move to Nvidia while the company nominally continues independently. Adding to the intrigue: 1789 Capital, where Donald Trump Jr. serves as partner, was among Groq's September investors who saw their stake nearly triple in just three months.

Updated Dec 27, 2025