Nvidia Corp. (NVDA, Financials) has acquired AI chip startup Groq in a $20 billion deal, gaining access to proprietary inference technology and talent as the company strengthens its leadership in AI hardware.

The transaction, which was announced on December 24, comprises Groq’s key employees and core assets. People know Groq for making inference accelerators that work very well for AI workloads. The partnership was set up as a non-exclusive license agreement that included complete ownership of intellectual property and the

merging of the teams.The move comes as more and more people want specialized AI silicon, especially for activities that need low latency and high efficiency. Groq’s specialized inference architecture adds to Nvidia’s supremacy in AI training with its H100 and H200 GPUs.