Groq Expands AI Chip Empire, Acquires Definitive Intelligence

Groq, an AI chip startup, forms new business unit and acquires Definitive Intelligence to expand its enterprise and public sector reach. Groq Systems, the new division, will focus on serving organizations that wish to add Groq’s chips to their data centers or build new ones using Groq processors.

Groq, a startup developing chips that run generative AI models faster than conventional hardware, has announced the formation of a new division, Groq Systems, aimed at expanding its customer and developer ecosystem. The new unit will focus on serving organizations, including government agencies, that wish to add Groq’s chips to their existing data centers or build new ones using Groq processors.

As part of the new unit’s formation, Groq has acquired Definitive Intelligence, a Palo Alto-based firm offering a range of business-oriented AI solutions, including chatbots, data analytics tools, and documentation builders. Definitive Intelligence CEO Sunny Madra is now leading GroqCloud, Groq’s cloud platform that provides hardware documentation, code samples, and self-serve API access to the company’s cloud-hosted accelerators.

Groq co-founder and CEO Jonathan Ross said in a press release, “At Groq, we’re committed to creating an AI economy that’s accessible and affordable for anyone with a brilliant idea. We’re excited to welcome Sunny and his team from Definitive Intelligence to help us achieve this mission.”

Madra co-founded Definitive Intelligence in 2022 with Gavin Sherry, ex-director of engineering at EMC. Prior to launching Definitive Intelligence, Madra and Sherry co-launched Autonomic, a cloud-based platform for connecting mobility systems that Ford acquired in 2018.

Definitive Intelligence offers several business-oriented GenAI products, including OpenAssistants (a collection of open source libraries for developing AI chatbots) and Advisor (a visualization generator that connects to both enterprise and public databases). One of Definitive’s premier tools is Pioneer, an “autonomous data science agent” designed to handle various data analytics tasks, including predictive modeling.

Prior to the acquisition, Definitive Intelligence had raised $25.5 million in venture capital.

Madra said in an emailed statement, “The world is just now realizing how important high-speed inference is to generative AI. At Groq, we’re giving developers the speed, low latency, and efficiency they need to deliver on the generative AI promise. I’ve been a big fan of Groq since I first met Jonathan in 2016 and I am thrilled to join him and the Groq team in their quest to bring the fastest inference engine to the world.”

Groq, which emerged from stealth in 2016, is creating what it calls an LPU (language processing unit) inference engine. The company claims that its LPU can run existing large language models similar in architecture to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and GPT-4 at 10x the speed. Ross’ claim to fame is helping to invent the tensor processing unit (TPU), Google’s custom AI accelerator chip used to train and run models.

Definitive Intelligence is Groq’s second acquisition after Maxeler Technologies, a high-performance compute and AI infrastructure solutions firm, in 2022. The market for custom AI chips is highly competitive, and Groq is clearly intent on establishing a foothold before its rivals have a chance.

In summary, Groq’s new business unit, Groq Systems, and its acquisition of Definitive Intelligence signal the company’s intent to expand its enterprise and public sector reach. With Madra leading GroqCloud and Definitive Intelligence’s range of business-oriented AI solutions, Groq is well-positioned to deliver on its promise of accessible and affordable AI for all.

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