Groq, an Nvidia challenger making chips for artificial intelligence (AI), is on track to be valued at $2.5 billion in a new funding round led by BlackRock, according to multiple sources.
Grok and BlackRock declined to comment.
Groq is rumored to be looking at a new funding round and recently hired Morgan Stanley to raise $300 million in new funding, The Information reported last month. Valuation and lead investors have not previously been reported.
The new funding has not yet been finalized, and terms are subject to change.The deal more than doubles Grok’s valuation when it raised $300 million in a 2021 round led by Tiger Global Management and D1 Capital Partners, according to Pitchbook data. The company has raised $367 million in total to date.
Groq, founded in 2016 by former Google executive Jonathan Ross, offers chips designed for inference — processing AI that’s already in place, rather than training new models. The company touts its chips, called “Language Processing Units,” as more than 10 times faster than previous chips and at one-tenth the cost.
Groq competes with hardware inference companies including Point72-backed SiMa.ai, Microsoft-backed Dmatrix and Intel-backed Untether.AI.Nvidia briefly became the world’s most valuable company last week before plummeting. Another Nvidia rival, Cerebras, has reportedly filed for an IPO privately, according to The Information.
Groq’s latest funding round was part of an unusual controversy at Social Capital, the venture firm founded by prominent investor and podcaster Chamath Palihapitiya, who fired two partners in March for trying to raise outside money for Groq, which Social Capital first backed eight years ago.
