Nvidia Licenses Groq Chips, Recruits Founders, Leaves Rest to Exist Alone
KEY POINTS
- •Nvidia signed a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Groq’s AI inference chip startup in December 2025.
- •Groq’s founder Jonathan Ross, president Sunny Madra, and other key engineers will join Nvidia to scale the tech.
- •Groq remains independent, while similar deals this year saw giants like Google and Meta license tech but mainly hire founders.
In Silicon Valley's latest episode of 'Who Wants To Hire A Startup?', Nvidia scored a non-exclusive licensing deal with Groq’s AI inference technology, snagging not only the tech but brains like Jonathan Ross and Sunny Madra—yes, the founder and president themselves—while letting the startup keep operating solo. Groq, a $6.9 billion brainchild known for its Language Processing Unit chips rivaling Nvidia's GPUs, recently raised a whopping $750 million. Meanwhile, other deals this year feature Google dropping $2.5 billion licensing Character.AI tech but hiring only founders and a 20% sample of employees, Amazon cozying up to Adept, Microsoft nodding at Inflection, and Meta making a $14 billion talent bet on Scale AI's CEO. Meanwhile, lesser mortals like Windsurf employees got split up after a $3 billion OpenAI near-acquisition fizzled. It’s a Silicon Valley talent buffet—some get the steak, rest get the crumbs with digital napkins.
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Nvidia licenses a startup's tech and poaches founders but leaves the rest of the team like abandoned luggage at the airport. Welcome to Silicon Valley’s fancy game of musical chairs, where only the blue-chip humans get a seat.
Silicon Valley just invented a new party game: hire the founders, leave everyone else to question their life choices.
These licensing deals look less like partnerships and more like kidnapping the brains, then ghosting the party.
Source: Businessinsider | Published: 12/25/2025 | Author: Katherine Li,Lloyd Lee
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