Groq, Inc.
Company History
Groq History: Founding, Growth & Key Milestones
Founded 2016 in Mountain View, California
When was Groq founded?
Groq was founded in 2016 in Mountain View, California by Jonathan Ross and Douglas Wightman, making it 10 years old.
- Founded
- 2016
- Founding place
- Mountain View, California
- Founders
- Jonathan Ross and Douglas Wightman
- Headquarters today
- Mountain View, California, United States
- Milestones documented
- 9 (2016–2026)
- Current CEO
- Doug Wightman
- Acquisitions
- 3
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 2016 | Groq founded |
| 2021 | $300M Series C |
| 2022 | Acquired Maxeler Technologies |
| 2024 | GroqCloud launches |
| 2024 | $640M Series D at $2.8B |
| 2025 | $750M at $6.9B valuation |
| 2025 | Nvidia licensing deal |
| 2026 | $650M raise and new leadership |
| 2026 | Nvidia Cloud Partner |
- Where was Groq founded?
- Groq was founded in Mountain View, California in 2016.
- Who founded Groq?
- Groq was founded by Jonathan Ross and Douglas Wightman.
- When did Groq start?
- Groq was founded in 2016.
- How old is Groq?
- Groq is 10 years old as of 2026.
Founding Story
Jonathan Ross helped start Google's TPU program as a side project before leaving Google in 2016. With fellow Google engineer Douglas Wightman he founded Groq to build a chip designed around the compiler: instead of hardware guessing what to do next at runtime, software would schedule every operation in advance. The result, first called the Tensor Streaming Processor and later the LPU, aimed at predictable, low-latency inference.
Founders
Jonathan Ross
Jonathan Ross co-founded Groq in 2016 and was its CEO until December 2025. At Google he helped start the TPU program, the custom AI accelerator Google uses across its services. At Groq he drove the compiler-first design of the LPU and the 2024 launch of GroqCloud, and raised funding from investors including BlackRock, Samsung, Cisco and Disruptive. In December 2025 he joined Nvidia as part of its roughly $20 billion licensing deal with Groq and is now Nvidia's chief software architect. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Douglas Wightman
Doug Wightman co-founded Groq with Jonathan Ross in 2016 after working as an engineer at Google. He stayed with Groq after Nvidia's December 2025 licensing deal and, by mid-2026, had become CEO, leading the company's shift toward running an AI inference cloud and its $650 million raise in June 2026. (Exact birth year remains publicly undisclosed).
Key Milestones
Groq founded
Jonathan Ross and Douglas Wightman founded Groq in Mountain View to build a compiler-first AI inference chip.
Source: en.wikipedia.org$300M Series C
Raised $300 million co-led by Tiger Global and D1 Capital, reaching unicorn status.
Source: en.wikipedia.orgGroqCloud launches
Opened GroqCloud to developers; demos of open LLMs at several hundred tokens per second drew wide attention. Acquired Definitive Intelligence.
Source: en.wikipedia.org$640M Series D at $2.8B
Raised $640 million led by BlackRock Private Equity Partners at a $2.8 billion valuation.
Source: en.wikipedia.org$750M at $6.9B valuation
Raised $750 million at a $6.9 billion post-money valuation, led by Disruptive.
Source: prnewswire.comNvidia licensing deal
Nvidia signed a non-exclusive license for Groq's inference technology, reported at about $20 billion, and hired Ross, Madra and other staff. CFO Simon Edwards became CEO.
Source: groq.com$650M raise and new leadership
Raised $650 million led by Disruptive and Infinitum; Doug Wightman became CEO and Groq added a new COO, CTO and CPO.
Source: techcrunch.comNvidia Cloud Partner
Became an Nvidia Cloud Partner, clearing the way to equip its data centers with Nvidia inference systems.
Source: groq.comMajor Acquisitions
Maxeler Technologies
2022Acquired the UK dataflow computing company to add engineering talent and technology.
Definitive Intelligence
2024Acquired Sunny Madra's AI data analytics company, whose team went on to build and run GroqCloud.
Maxeler Technologies HPC Assets
2022Absorbed European high-performance dataflow computing research and compiler acceleration assets in London and Belgrade.
Keep researching Groq
Groq Company History FAQ
When was Groq founded and by whom?
Groq was founded in 2016 in Mountain View, California, by Jonathan Ross and Douglas Wightman, both former Google engineers.
What are Groq's key milestones?
Founding (2016), a $300M Series C (2021), the GroqCloud launch and Definitive Intelligence acquisition (2024), a $640M Series D at $2.8B (2024), $750M at $6.9B (2025), the Nvidia licensing deal (December 2025), and a $650M raise in June 2026.
Why did Groq go viral in 2024?
Public GroqCloud demos showed open models such as Llama and Mixtral generating text at several hundred tokens per second, far faster than many GPU-based services at the time.
What happened to Groq after the Nvidia deal?
Groq stayed independent, rebuilt its leadership, raised $650 million and refocused on running its GroqCloud inference data centers.
How did Groq start?
Groq was founded in 2016 by Jonathan Ross. While working as an engineer at Google, Ross famously designed the original Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) as a "20% time" side project. Realizing that traditional GPUs were terrible for AI inference, he left Google and founded Groq to build a radically new type of microchip from the ground up.
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