Jonathan Ross, chief government officer of Groq Inc., in the course of the GenAI Summit in San Francisco, California, US, on Thursday, Might 30, 2024.
David Paul | Bloomberg | Getty Pictures
Synthetic intelligence semiconductor startup Groq introduced Monday it has established its first information middle in Europe because it steps up its worldwide enlargement.
Groq, which is backed by funding arms of Samsung and Cisco, mentioned the info middle can be positioned in Helsinki, Finland and is in partnership with Equinix.
Groq is trying to make the most of rising demand for AI companies in Europe following different U.S. companies which have additionally ramped up funding within the area. The Nordics specifically is a well-liked location for the info services because the area has easy accessibility to renewable vitality and cooler climates. Final month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was in Europe and signed several infrastructure deals, together with information facilities.
Groq, which is valued at $2.8 billion, designs a chip that the corporate calls a language processing unit (LPU). It’s designed for inferencing moderately coaching. Inferencing is when a pre-trained AI mannequin interprets dwell information to give you a end result, very similar to the solutions which might be produced by in style chatbots.
Whereas Nvidia has a stranglehold on the chips required for coaching enormous AI fashions with its graphics processing models (GPUs), there’s a swathe of startups hoping to take a slice of the pie in terms of inferencing. SambaNova; Ampere, an organization SoftBank is within the course of of buying; Cerebras and Fractile, are all trying to be a part of the AI inference race.
European politicians have been pushing the notion of sovereign AI — the place information facilities have to be positioned within the area. Knowledge facilities which might be positioned nearer to customers additionally assist enhance the pace of companies.
International information middle builder Equinix connects completely different cloud suppliers collectively, equivalent to Amazon Internet Providers and Google Cloud, making it simpler for companies to have a number of distributors. Groq’s LPUs can be put in contained in the Equinix information middle permitting companies to entry Groq’s inference capabilities through Equinix.
Groq at the moment has information facilities within the U.S. and Canada and Saudi Arabia with its know-how.
Do not miss Groq CEO Jonathan Ross on Squawk Field Europe at 7:45 a.m. London time.