Groq is an AI inference hardware and cloud company built around its custom LPU (Language Processing Unit) chip, designed specifically for very fast, low-latency large language model inference rather than general-purpose training. The company was founded in 2016 by Jonathan Ross, a former Google engineer who had worked on Google's TPU chip effort.
Groq's leadership and capital structure shifted substantially through 2025 and 2026: Ross departed to join Nvidia in December 2025 following a licensing deal for Groq's LPU technology, and Adam Winter took over as CEO in 2026, with some sources describing his title as interim. A subsequent funding round in mid-2026 came in at roughly half Groq's prior $6.9 billion valuation, reflecting a more cautious market for specialized AI inference hardware after the Nvidia deal reset expectations.