Nvidia (NVDA) investors have a new legal development to watch following a lawsuit filed on Oct. 2 by two former Groq employees and shareholders over the artificial intelligence (AI) chip startup’s deal with Nvidia. The transaction, announced in December 2025, was structured as a non-exclusive licensing agreement rather than a traditional acquisition.
Nvidia agreed to pay $17 billion to license Groq’s language-processing-unit (LPU) technology, while also hiring Groq’s founder Jonathan Ross, senior executives, and much of its engineering team. A separate $3 billion Nvidia stock pool was created for certain Groq employees who joined Nvidia, bringing the widely reported value of the arrangement to about $20 billion.