Groq, a start-up specialising in AI chips, raised $640 million in a funding round which included involvement from KDDI, Samsung Electronics and Cisco, giving it a valuation of $2.8 billion.

The financing round was led by investor BlackRock and attracted backing from investment funds of the two technology giants and the Japanese operator’s venture arm it runs in partnership with Global Brain.

Groq, founded by former Google engineer Jonathan Ross, claims the fresh funding will aid its plan to hire new talent and deploy more than 108,000 language processing units into its cloud architecture.

This will enable technology companies including newcomers “to create cutting-edge AI products”, Ross said.

The startup builds advanced AI inference processors which delivers “exceptional AI compute speed, quality and energy efficiency”. It also provides cloud and on-premises solutions for AI applications.

Groq claimed its AI inference chipset “has generated skyrocketing demand from developers seeking exceptional speed” and powers new applications based on open-sourced models, including Meta Platforms’ Llama 3.1.

Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg lauded “innovators like Groq”, which “have built low-latency, low-cost inference serving for all the new models” in an open letter published last month.

Groq has also notably struck a partnership with Aramco Digital to establish AI compute centres globally.