Six months ago, AI chip startup Groq was flying so far under the radar that one of its few newsworthy moments was when its CEO Jonathan Ross sent Elon Musk a sarcastic cease and desist letter complaining about X.ai's similarly-named chatbot, Grok. That all changed Monday, however, with the news that the Silicon Valley-based Groq, one of several startups picking off pieces of Nvidia’s AI chip business, has raised $640 million in a funding round led by Blackrock that values the company at $2.8 billion. Industry leaders like Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg are touting Groq, while Meta chief scientist Yann LeCun has come on board as a technical advisor.
But it was a viral moment in February 2024 that set the stage for today’s massive funding round. It was “100% a game changer,” Groq CEO Jonathan Ross told Fortune in a recent interview.
