Groq AI Chip Startup Nears $6B Valuation in New Funding Round

Groq Pursues $600 Million Funding Round

Groq, a company specializing in artificial intelligence chips, is reportedly negotiating a new funding round of $600 million. Sources familiar with the matter, speaking to Bloomberg, indicate this would value the company at approximately $6 billion.

However, it's important to note that the agreement isn't finalized and the specific terms are still subject to change.

Rapid Valuation Growth

This potential investment represents a significant increase in Groq’s valuation. In August 2024, the company secured $640 million at a $2.8 billion valuation.

This means the company’s valuation has roughly doubled within a year. Prior to this, Groq had already raised around $1 billion in funding.

Investment Leadership

The current funding round is being spearheaded by Disruptive, a firm located in Austin, Texas, according to Bloomberg’s reporting.

The previous round, completed in November, was led by BlackRock, with contributions from Neuberger Berman, Type One Ventures, Cisco, KDDI, and the Samsung Catalyst Fund.

Company Origins and Development

Groq was established by Jonathan Ross, a former Google engineer who played a key role in the development of Google’s Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) chip.

The company initially operated in stealth mode before publicly launching in 2016.

Recent Partnerships

This new funding effort follows recent strategic partnerships for Groq.

In May, Groq announced an exclusive collaboration with Bell Canada to provide the infrastructure for a substantial AI project. Furthermore, in April, a partnership was formed with Meta to accelerate Llama 4 inference using Groq’s AI infrastructure.

Requests for comment sent to both Disruptive and Groq have not yet received a response.

Note: A previous version of this article contained an inaccurate date regarding the last funding round; this has been corrected.