Groq, Inc.

AI Inference SemiconductorsFounded 2016- HQ today: Mountain View, California, United States

Founders

Who Founded Groq?

Jonathan Ross, Douglas Wightman · Founded 2016 · HQ today: Mountain View, California, United States

Who founded Groq?

Groq was founded by Jonathan Ross, Douglas Wightman in 2016. It is now led by Doug Wightman.

Founders: Jonathan Ross, Douglas Wightman
Founded: 2016
Headquarters: Mountain View, California, United States
Number of founders: 2
Current CEO: Doug Wightman (since 2026)

Where was Groq founded?: Groq was founded in Mountain View, California in 2016.
When was Groq founded?: Groq was founded in 2016.
Who started Groq?: Groq was founded by Jonathan Ross and Douglas Wightman.
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.

Jonathan Ross

Background

Jonathan Ross worked at Google, where he helped start the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) program as a 20% project, before founding Groq in 2016.

Role at Groq, Inc.

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

Background

Douglas (Doug) Wightman is a former Google engineer who co-founded Groq with Jonathan Ross in 2016.

Role at Groq, Inc.

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).

Groq, Inc.: CEO & Leadership History

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Doug Wightman

Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder

2026 – Present

He manages massive engineering efforts to ensure the LPU hardware scales efficiently across data centers without catastrophic network bottlenecks.

Alan Rice

Chief Operating Officer

2026 – Present

He manages the incredibly complex supply chain required to manufacture highly advanced semiconductors in a deeply constrained global market.

Sinclair Schuller

Chief Technology Officer

2026 – Present

He directs the massive software engineering effort required to ensure standard AI models (like Llama) can actually compile and run on Groq's highly unique, non-GPU architecture.

Rakesh Malhotra

Chief Product Officer

2026 – Present

He leads the physical silicon design, ensuring the LPU can actually be manufactured at scale by massive foundries like GlobalFoundries.

Simon Edwards

Chief Executive Officer (former; previously CFO)

2025 – 2026

He aggressively markets Groq's staggering speed advantage, specifically targeting developers frustrated by the slow response times of ChatGPT and other cloud providers.

Alex Davis

Chairman

2021 – Present

He aggressively targets massive enterprise AI deployments, proving that Groq's specialized chips are significantly cheaper to run at scale than Nvidia's highly expensive H100s.

Jonathan Ross

Founder & Chief Executive Officer (former)

2016 – 2025

As Founder and CEO, the former Google TPU architect aggressively positions Groq as the absolute fastest AI hardware on Earth, explicitly targeting the massive latency bottlenecks of generative AI.

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Who Founded Groq? FAQ

Who founded Groq?

Jonathan Ross and Douglas Wightman, both former Google engineers, founded Groq in 2016.

Where is Jonathan Ross now?

Ross joined Nvidia in December 2025 as part of its licensing deal with Groq and is Nvidia's chief software architect.

What does Doug Wightman do at Groq?

Wightman stayed after the Nvidia deal and is Groq's CEO as of 2026.

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Who founded Groq?

Founding Story

Jonathan Ross

Background

Role at Groq, Inc.

Douglas Wightman

Background

Role at Groq, Inc.

Groq, Inc.: CEO & Leadership History

Compare Groq, Inc. Leadership With Competitors

Keep researching Groq

Who Founded Groq? FAQ

Who founded Groq?

Where is Jonathan Ross now?

What does Doug Wightman do at Groq?

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