Five things to know about Nvidia’s $20 billion licensing deal

Dec 30, 2025
1 min read

Nvidia’s licensing deal with startup Groq is a sign of growing competition for top talent and technology on the next front of the AI war: inference.

The $20 billion licensing agreement gives Nvidia access to Groq’s specialized inference-chip technology used to run artificial-intelligence applications, and prevents a GPU alternative from becoming a serious competitor.

The deal represents a remarkable turn for the nearly decade-old chip startup. The company at one point nearly ran out of cash and asked staff to trade salaries for equity, its founder, Jonathan Ross, said on the 20VC podcast earlier this year.