A major shift is underway in the artificial intelligence chip space as Nvidia brings in top talent from a fast growing AI startup to expand its reach.
Nvidia has hired senior leadership from AI chip company Groq, according to a statement released on Wednesday. The move comes as the AI giant looks to strengthen its position in low cost AI processing and inference technology.
Groq confirmed that its leadership transition is part of a non exclusive licensing agreement with Nvidia. Under the deal, Groq founder Jonathan Ross and president Sunny Madra, along with other team members, will join Nvidia. Their role will focus on helping develop and scale Groq’s inference technology.
Nvidia already dominates the AI training chip market and has become the world’s largest company by market value. However, it is facing rising competition in the AI inference segment from specialized startups such as Groq.
AI inference is the stage where trained AI models are used to generate outputs. This includes tasks like ChatGPT answering user questions or systems identifying objects in images.
Groq will continue to operate as an independent company. Simon Edwards has been appointed as the new chief executive, the company said in a brief statement.
The announcement followed a report by a media outlet claiming Nvidia was acquiring Groq for $20 billion. However, a source close to the matter told a news agency that no sale had taken place.
Industry observers say the arrangement closely mirrors an “acquihire”, a growing trend in Silicon Valley where large technology firms bring in key talent from smaller companies while leaving the original firm intact. This approach is often used to avoid close attention from competition regulators who are wary of tech giants buying potential rivals.
Similar moves have been seen in recent years. In 2024, Microsoft struck a deal with AI startup Inflection AI, bringing co founder Mustafa Suleyman and much of the team into Microsoft. Google followed a similar path in 2024 by hiring teams from AI startups including Character.AI.
In 2025, Meta made one of the largest such deals by investing $14.3 billion in Scale AI and hiring its chief executive Alexandr Wang to lead its new “superintelligence” AI lab.
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