AI chip company Groq has secured a $1.5 billion investment from Saudi Arabia and expanded its domestic AI inference infrastructure.
Chip Company has an existing partnership with Aramco Digital in the region. GROQ provides the scalable infrastructure needed to deliver the AI model for voice commands to the market.
Aramco Digital is a digital and technology subsidiary of state-run ARAMCO, the world’s largest oil producer, with the rights to the world’s second-largest proven crude oil reserve.
The new investment will be used to support the expansion of Damman GROQ’s existing data centers, supporting the development of the Saudi Arabian Bureau of Data and Artificial Intelligence (SDAIA) Arabian large-scale language model.
GROQ CEO and co-founder Jonathan Ross writes for LinkedIn. “In 51 days, we have announced a $1.5 billion agreement to build the largest inference cluster in Saudi Arabia, and GROQ has announced a $1.5 billion agreement to expand our sophisticated LPU-based AI inference infrastructure. We’ll build it quickly.”
Talk to DCD at Supercomputing 2024 in November, GROQ’s Chief Technology Evangelist and Brand and Creative VP Mark Heaps said Aramco Digital and Saudi Arabia will be taking part in the data center project as the region has access to unlimited and affordable electricity. He said he could provide funding.
“We send thousands of LPUs (language processing units) to the area,” Heap said. “(Damman Data Centre) is part of Saudi Arabia’s vision for 2030. And it’s all dedicated to reasoning and there’s no training at all.”
He added: Having another economy. And computing is the perfect economy to start entering. ”
The latest funding agreement was announced at Leap 2025, Saudi Arabia’s global technology event.
GROQ was co-founded by Ross in 2016. Ross previously led the development of Google’s tensor processing units. The company offers dedicated chips and accelerators in its own servers and racks designed for artificial intelligence, machine learning and high-performance computing.
In August 2024, Groq closed a $640 million funding round led by BlackRock, joining from Neuberger Berman, Type One Ventures, Cisco, KDDI and Samsung Catalyst Fund.
