Groq vs NVIDIA: Founders, CEOs and History
Groq was founded in 2016 by Jonathan Ross, Douglas Wightman and is led by Doug Wightman. NVIDIA was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, Curtis Priem and is led by Jensen Huang.
Company facts
Founders
Groq
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.
Douglas Wightman
Doug Wightman co-founded Groq with Jonathan Ross in 2016 after working as an engineer at Google.
NVIDIA
Jensen Huang
Nvidia possesses a gritty, prescient founding story, rooted entirely in a specific, technical conversation at a well-known American diner, and driven by a CEO who possessed an unshakable conviction in an unproven computational theory.
Chris Malachowsky
Chris Malachowsky co-founded NVIDIA in 1993 and became a central figure in the company's technical foundation.
Curtis Priem
Curtis Priem co-founded NVIDIA in 1993 and served as one of the company's original architects.
CEOs and their tenures
Groq
- Alex Davis
Chairman
Founder of Dallas-based Disruptive, which led Groq's 2025 and 2026 rounds.
Source - Jonathan Ross2016–2025
Founder & Chief Executive Officer (former)
Led Groq from founding through the LPU and GroqCloud launch; joined Nvidia in December 2025.
Source - Simon Edwards2025–2026
Chief Executive Officer (former; previously CFO)
Became CEO in December 2025 after the Nvidia deal; left to become Bloom Energy CFO effective April 13, 2026.
Source - Doug Wightman2026–present
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder
Co-founded Groq in 2016; stayed after the Nvidia deal and became CEO, leading the pivot to an inference cloud and the June 2026 $650M raise.
Source - Alan Rice2026–present
Chief Operating Officer
Joined from xAI and Meta after a career in the U.S. Navy.
Source - Sinclair Schuller2026–present
Chief Technology Officer
Founder of Apprenda and co-founder of Nuvalence (acquired by EY in 2024).
Source - Rakesh Malhotra2026–present
Chief Product Officer
Nuvalence co-founder who spent about a decade on Microsoft cloud products.
Source
NVIDIA
- Jensen Huang1993–present
CEO
Huang has been CEO for more than 33 years, which makes him one of the longest-serving founder-CEOs in the industry. Under him NVIDIA bet early on CUDA and deep learning, bought Mellanox for networking, and moved to a yearly architecture cadence.
Source - Chris Malachowsky1993–2024
Co-Founder
Chris Malachowsky co-founded Nvidia in 1993. As Senior Vice President of Engineering and Operations, he played a critical role in developing the early graphics processing architecture and establishing Nvidia's robust engineering supply chain.
Source - Colette Kress2013–present
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
She has been CFO through NVIDIA's growth from about $4B of annual revenue to $215.9B in FY2026, and she leads its quarterly earnings communication with investors.
Source
Timeline: Groq and NVIDIA side by side
1993NVIDIA
Founding in Santa Clara
Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem founded NVIDIA on April 5, 1993, with a focus on 3D graphics for gaming and multimedia. The founding set the company on a parallel-processing path long before AI infrastructure became the main market.
1999NVIDIA
GPU Category Defined
NVIDIA introduced the graphics processing unit concept in 1999. The milestone mattered because it framed graphics hardware as a specialized processor, a technical idea that later carried into accelerated computing and AI workloads.
2006NVIDIA
CUDA Opens GPUs to General Computing
CUDA opened GPU parallel processing to scientists, researchers, and developers outside graphics. It became the software foundation that made NVIDIA hardware useful for machine learning, simulation, and other compute-heavy workloads.
2012NVIDIA
AlexNet Shows GPU Value for Deep Learning
The AlexNet breakthrough used NVIDIA GPUs to win the ImageNet competition. The event helped convince researchers and engineers that GPUs could accelerate neural-network training at a scale CPUs could not match.
2016Groq
Groq founded
Jonathan Ross and Douglas Wightman founded Groq in Mountain View to build a compiler-first AI inference chip.
2018NVIDIA
RTX Brings Real-Time Ray Tracing to Graphics
NVIDIA RTX brought real-time ray tracing into the company's graphics roadmap. The product line kept gaming and professional visualization tied to AI-enhanced rendering while Data Center was becoming more important.
2020NVIDIA
Mellanox Acquisition Adds Networking
NVIDIA completed the Mellanox acquisition for about $7 billion. The deal mattered because large AI and high-performance-computing clusters depend on fast networking between accelerators, not only on individual GPU speed.
2021Groq
$300M Series C
Raised $300 million co-led by Tiger Global and D1 Capital, reaching unicorn status.
2022NVIDIA
Arm Acquisition Terminated
NVIDIA and SoftBank terminated the proposed Arm acquisition because of significant regulatory challenges. The failed deal showed how closely governments watch control points in semiconductor architecture.
2023NVIDIA
Grace CPU Enters Data Center Roadmap
NVIDIA introduced its first data-center CPU, Grace, for large-scale AI and high-performance computing. The milestone expanded the platform from GPUs and networking into CPU-GPU system design.
2024Groq
GroqCloud launches
Opened GroqCloud to developers; demos of open LLMs at several hundred tokens per second drew wide attention. Acquired Definitive Intelligence.
2024Groq
$640M Series D at $2.8B
Raised $640 million led by BlackRock Private Equity Partners at a $2.8 billion valuation.
2024NVIDIA
Blackwell Architecture Launched
NVIDIA launched Blackwell as a data-center-scale architecture combining GPUs, CPUs, DPUs, interconnects, switch chips, systems, and networking adapters. The architecture became central to FY2026 Data Center demand.
2025Groq
$750M at $6.9B valuation
Raised $750 million at a $6.9 billion post-money valuation, led by Disruptive.
2025Groq
Nvidia 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.
2026Groq
$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.
2026Groq
Nvidia Cloud Partner
Became an Nvidia Cloud Partner, clearing the way to equip its data centers with Nvidia inference systems.
2026NVIDIA
$215.9B FY2026 Revenue
NVIDIA reported $215.9 billion of FY2026 revenue, $193.7 billion of Data Center revenue, and $120.1 billion of net income. The result showed how far AI infrastructure had moved the company beyond its original PC graphics market.
Acquisitions
NVIDIA
- Groq (technology license and team)2025Undisclosed
- Run:ai2024$700M
- Excelero2022Undisclosed
- Mellanox Technologies2020$6.9B
- Cumulus Networks2020Undisclosed
- Icera2011$367M
Questions about Groq vs NVIDIA
Who is the CEO of Groq, Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation?
Groq, Inc. is led by Doug Wightman and NVIDIA Corporation is led by Jensen Huang. Both serve as the top executive responsible for the company's strategy, operations, and financial performance.
When was Groq, Inc. founded vs NVIDIA Corporation?
NVIDIA Corporation was founded in 1993 — 23 years before Groq, Inc., which was founded in 2016. NVIDIA Corporation's longer operating history gives it a deeper track record but also potentially more institutional inertia compared to the younger Groq, Inc..
How many employees does Groq, Inc. have compared to NVIDIA Corporation?
NVIDIA Corporation employs approximately 42,000 people. A verified employee count for Groq, Inc. is not currently available.
Where are Groq, Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation headquartered?
Both Groq, Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation are headquartered in United States, meaning they operate under the same primary regulatory and tax environment.
Who founded Groq, Inc. and NVIDIA Corporation?
Groq, Inc. was founded by Jonathan Ross, Douglas Wightman. NVIDIA Corporation was founded by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, Curtis Priem.
Which company has a longer operating history — Groq, Inc. or NVIDIA Corporation?
NVIDIA Corporation has been operating for approximately 33 years, making it the more established of the two companies. Groq, Inc. has been in operation for around 10 years. A longer operating history often signals greater institutional resilience and brand recognition, though it can also mean slower adaptation to new market conditions.
Figures come from each company's filings and the sources linked beside them. Amounts reported in another currency are shown in US dollars at an approximate rate and marked with ~. Back to the Groq vs NVIDIA overview