Recently, California-based AI chip company Groq has entered into a collaboration agreement with Saudi Arabia's oil giant Aramco to establish a large data center in Saudi Arabia. The goal of this data center is to enhance Saudi Arabia's capabilities in the field of artificial intelligence and further diversify the country's economy.
Jonathan Ross, CEO of Groq, stated that the data center is expected to be operational by the end of the year, initially equipped with 19,000 language processing units (LPUs).
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If everything goes smoothly, there is potential for expansion to 200,000 LPUs in the future. Groq, founded in 2016, specializes in developing dedicated hardware for AI applications, with its LPUs designed to run language models at high speeds, processing hundreds of tokens per second.
Groq's plan is to make this new Saudi data center the world's largest AI inference center. Saudi Aramco will fully fund this project, with Ross estimating the total cost to be in the nine-figure range. This collaboration aligns perfectly with Saudi Arabia's strategy to become a tech hub and diversify its economy. Ross also noted that this would be a way for Aramco to make significant capital investments, helping to reduce reliance on oil.
Groq hopes to leverage Saudi Arabia's cheap energy and abundant land resources to seize development opportunities. The data center's location is also highly advantageous, capable of serving 400 million people with low latency, no more than 100 milliseconds.
Meanwhile, Groq has recently secured $640 million in funding, with the company's valuation reaching $2.8 billion. The lead investor is Blackstone Group, with participation from Cisco Systems and Samsung Electronics. Groq's LPUs are expected to serve as an alternative to Nvidia's chips for AI inference tasks, although they cannot yet replace Nvidia in model training.
Ross also mentioned that this collaboration with Aramco could extend to other projects, and Groq looks forward to more collaborations with Aramco Digital in the region.
Key Points:
- 🌍 Groq partners with Saudi Aramco to plan the world's largest AI inference center in Saudi Arabia, initially equipped with 19,000 LPUs.
- 💰 Saudi Aramco fully funds the project, with an estimated cost in the nine-figure range, aiming to diversify the economy.
- ⚡ Groq leverages Saudi's cheap energy and strategic location, with potential to expand to 200,000 LPUs, enhancing AI capabilities.