Technology

GROQ RAISES $640M TO MEET SOARING DEMAND FOR FAST AI INFERENCE

Published

5 months ago

August 5, 2024

Groq to Scale Capacity, Add Exceptional Talent, and Accelerate the Next Gen LPU™

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif., Aug. 5, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Groq, a leader in fast AI inference, has secured a $640M Series D round at a valuation of $2.8B. The round was led by funds and accounts managed by BlackRock Private Equity Partners with participation from both existing and new investors including Neuberger Berman, Type One Ventures, and strategic investors including Cisco Investments, Global Brain’s KDDI Open Innovation Fund III, and Samsung Catalyst Fund. The unique, vertically integrated Groq AI inference platform has generated skyrocketing demand from developers seeking exceptional speed.

Groq, a leader in fast AI inference, has secured a $640M Series D round at a valuation of $2.8B.

“The market for AI compute is meaningful and Groq’s vertically integrated solution is well positioned to meet this opportunity. We look forward to supporting Groq as they scale to meet demand and accelerate their innovation further,” said Samir Menon, Managing Director, BlackRock Private Equity Partners.

“Samsung Catalyst Fund is excited to support Groq,” said Marco Chisari, Head of Samsung Semiconductor Innovation Center and EVP of Samsung Electronics. “We are highly impressed by Groq’s disruptive compute architecture and their software-first approach. Groq’s record-breaking speed and near-instant Generative AI inference performance leads the market.”

“You can’t power AI without inference compute,” said Jonathan Ross, CEO and Founder of Groq. “We intend to make the resources available so that anyone can create cutting-edge AI products, not just the largest tech companies. This funding will enable us to deploy more than 100,000 additional LPUs into GroqCloud. Training AI models is solved, now it’s time to deploy these models so the world can use them. Having secured twice the funding sought, we now plan to significantly expand our talent density. We’re the team enabling hundreds of thousands of developers to build on open models and – we’re hiring.”

Today, Groq also announced that Stuart Pann, formerly a senior executive from HP and Intel, joined its leadership team as Chief Operating Officer.

“I am delighted to be at Groq at this pivotal moment. We have the technology, the talent, and the market position to rapidly scale our capacity and deliver inference deployment economics for developers as well as for Groq,” said Stuart Pann, Chief Operating Officer at Groq.

Groq also gains the world-class expertise of its newest technical advisor, Yann LeCun, VP & Chief AI Scientist at Meta.

Developers Flock to Groq
Groq has quickly grown to over 360,000 developers building on GroqCloud™, creating AI applications on openly-available models such as Llama 3.1 from Meta, Whisper Large V3 from OpenAI, Gemma from Google, and Mixtral from Mistral. Groq will use the funding to scale the capacity of its tokens-as-a-service (TaaS) offering and add new models and features to GroqCloud.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and Founder of Meta recently shared in his letter entitled, Open Source AI Is the Path Forward,”Innovators like Groq have built low-latency, low-cost inference serving for all the new models.”

Scaling Capacity
As Gen AI applications move from training to deployment, developers and enterprises require an inference strategy that meets the user and market need for speed. The tsunami of developers flocking to Groq are creating a wide range of new and creative AI applications and models, fueled by Groq instant speed.

To meet its developer and enterprise demand, Groq will deploy over 108,000 LPUs manufactured by GlobalFoundries by the end of Q1 2025, the largest AI inference compute deployment of any non-hyperscaler.

Mohsen Moazami, President of International at Groq, former leader of Emerging Markets at Cisco, is leading commercial efforts with enterprises and partners including Aramco Digital and Earth Wind & Power to build out AI compute centers globally. This will ensure developers have access to Groq technology regardless of their location.

“Aramco Digital is partnering with Groq to build one of the largest AI Inference-as-a-Service compute infrastructure in the MENA region,” said Tareq Amin, Chief Executive Officer, Aramco Digital. “Our close collaboration with Groq is transformational for both domestic and global AI demand.”

Accelerating Innovation
Groq LPU™ AI inference technology is architected from the ground up with a software-first design to meet the unique characteristics and needs of AI. This approach has given Groq an advantage to bring new models to developers quickly, at instant speed. The investment will enable Groq to accelerate the next two generations of LPU.

Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC served as exclusive Placement Agent to Groq on the transaction.

About Groq
Groq builds fast AI inference technology. Groq® LPU™ AI inference technology is a hardware and software platform that delivers exceptional AI compute speed, quality, and energy efficiency. Groq, headquartered in Silicon Valley, provides cloud and on-prem solutions at scale for AI applications. The LPU and related systems are designed and manufactured in North America.

Future Groqsters can find open roles here. Try Groq instant speed at www.groq.com.

Media Contact
Megan Hartwick
pr-media@groq.com

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Technology

OceanBase Receives Honorable Mention for the Second Consecutive Year in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ Report

Published

34 minutes ago

December 26, 2024

SINGAPORE, Dec. 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — OceanBase has once again been named as Honorable Mention in the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Cloud Database Management Systems (Cloud DBMS), marking the second consecutive year it has received this recognition.

OceanBase offers scalable distributed database for data-intensive transactional and real-time operational analytics workloads, with ultra-fast performance and high compatibility across major global cloud infrastructures, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Alibaba Cloud and Tencent Cloud. Operating across more than 30 regions in Asia, Europe, and America, OceanBase has already served over 2,000 customers, such as SAIC Volkswagen, DiDi Global, vivo, Pop Mart, Haidilao, Kwai, Trip.com, GCash, DANA, and PalmPay.

Over the past year, OceanBase has made significant strides in the Southeast Asian market. In December 2024, Starpay, a leading financial technology company in the Philippines, announced a partnership with OceanBase to leverage its cutting-edge distributed database solutions.

OceanBase hosted the inaugural OceanBase INFINITY tech conference in Jakarta, Indonesia in June 2024. During the event, the company announced strategic partnerships with leading local resellers to better serve customers in the Indonesian market.

According to Gartner’s latest DBMS market data in the Magic Quadrant, “the overall database management system market grew by 13.4% in 2023, reaching $103.2 billion“, up from $91 billion in 2022. The DBMS segment remains one of the fastest-growing areas within the software market, alongside analytic platforms, networking software, and supply chain management software.

In May 2024, OceanBase was also recognized as an Asia/Pacific Customers’ Choice and also named a Strong Performer in the 2024 Gartner® Peer Insights™ Voice of the Customer for Cloud DBMS report.

Gartner, Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems, 18 December 2024

Gartner, Voice of the Customer for Cloud Database Management Systems, 24 May 2024

Gartner Peer Insights content consists of the opinions of individual end users based on their own experiences, and should not be construed as statements of fact, nor do they represent the views of Gartner or its affiliates. Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in this content nor makes any warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this content, about its accuracy or completeness, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

About OceanBase

OceanBase is a distributed database launched in 2010. It provides strong data consistency, high availability, high performance, cost efficiency, elastic scalability, and compatibility with mainstream relational databases. It handles transactional, analytical, and AI workloads through a unified data engine, enabling mission-critical applications and real-time analytics.

To learn more, please visit: https://www.oceanbase.com/

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Technology

Matwings Technology Raised Series A Funding of Tens of Millions USD to Redefine Protein Design

Published

34 minutes ago

December 26, 2024

‘Beyond Structure, Predicting Function’

SHANGHAI, Dec. 25, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Recently, Shanghai Matwings Technology Co., Ltd. (‘Matwings’), a global leader in AI-driven protein design, announced the successful completion of Series A funding rounds, raising tens of millions of USD, led by Qiming Venture Partners.

Matwings is pioneering a new frontier in protein engineering with its proprietary AI-based general protein design platform, AccelProtein™, which directly predicts protein functionality beyond the structural data. By predicting functionality, AccelProtein™ offers a new approach for acquiring high-functioning proteins.

AccelProtein™ is built on the Pro-PRIME model, a breakthrough developed by a collaborative team led by Professor Liang Hong at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. After years of research focused on data collection, curation, and optimization, the team developed the Pro-series – an AI framework for protein design. Their work, titled “A General Temperature-Guided Language Model to Design Proteins of Enhanced Stability and Activity” was recently published in Science Advances.

A featured case of AccelProtein™’s impact is the design of a specialized Glycosyltransferase enzyme, which is used in the production of EPS-G7, a core material for pancreatitis screening. Within just 4 months, Matwings increased the enzyme’s total glycosylation activity by 7 times, enhanced product specificity from 60% to 98%, and reduced hydrolytic activity by 33%. These improvements cut down the cost of EPS-G7 by 90%.

In another application, Matwings successfully engineered a super alkali-resistant affinity ligand (a nanobody) for affinity chromatography, improving alkali resistance by 3 folds, binding capacity over 100%, and heat stability by 8℃. This innovation saved millions of USD in CMC costs for a Matwings client. Additionally, scale-up production to 5000L has been successfully completed. Such advancement enables low-cost affinity chromatography purification a viable option for a wide range of biologics, bringing more cost-effective solutions for drug production.

Since 2021, Matwings has successfully delivered over 30 protein-engineering and enzyme-mining projects either proprietary (e.g., Enterokinase, Carboxypeptidase B, KEX2 Protease, Maltogenic Amylase, Subtilisin, Protein A, PETase, T7 RNA Polymerase, and phi29 DNA Polymerase) and co-developed with our stakeholders. These projects span across various applications, including drug innovation, in vitro diagnostics, nutrition and healthcare, food and beverage, and green energy.

About Matwings

Matwings, founded in 2021 by an elite team from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, is one of the earliest companies to focus on AI protein models.

Matwings is dedicated to moving beyond directed evolution methods to design and engineer functionally optimized proteins by leveraging a proprietary, pre-trained, AI-based general protein design platform with 780 million curated full-length protein sequence data, including nearly 500 million private data.

This cutting-edge technology platform, AccelProtein™, enables us to engineer proteins and uncover or de novo design novel proteins with significantly improved properties, including stability, activity, affinity, yield, etc.

To date, Matwings has successfully engineered more than 30 proteins either proprietary or co-developed with its stakeholders, and more than 40 ongoing projects across various applications in pharmaceutical industries and synthetic biology industries, e.g. key enzymes and proteins for CMC, innovative Biologics, synthetic biology and more.

Matwings is actively seeking global partnerships to jointly develop and commercialize new products.

Contact Information:
Email: info@matwings.com
Website: https://www.matwings.com/en/
Tel: +86 158 2106 5410
Paper Link: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adr2641

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Technology

Agoda Highlights Tokyo as Top Global New Year’s Eve Destination

Published

2 hours ago

December 26, 2024

SINGAPORE, Dec. 26, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Digital travel platform Agoda has announced Tokyo as the most popular destination for New Year’s Eve, based on accommodation searches. This marks a shift from last year when Taipei held the top spot. Following Tokyo, the list includes Bangkok, Taipei, Pattaya, and Osaka, showcasing a diverse range of preferences among travelers.

The data highlights a perpetual interest in Tokyo, a city known for its unique blend of tradition and modernity. Travelers are drawn to its vibrant celebrations, cultural experiences, and iconic landmarks. Bangkok and Taipei, too, continue to be favored destinations, offering rich cultural festivities and lively atmospheres. Pattaya and Osaka also make the list, appealing to those seeking beachside celebrations and culinary delights, respectively.

Agoda’s data reveals Tokyo’s prominence not only on a worldwide scale but also within Japan. Domestic accommodation searches have increased by 23%, with Tokyo leading as the preferred destination, followed by Osaka, Kyoto, Yokohama, and Okinawa Main Island. For Japanese traveling abroad, the destinations primarily considered are Taipei, Seoul, Bangkok, Pattaya, and Hong Kong.

Hiroto Ooka, Associate Vice President North Asia at Agoda said: “Tokyo’s rise to the top of Agoda’s New Year’s Eve destination list is a testament to the city’s global appeal. Whether you’re celebrating New Year’s Eve in Tokyo, Osaka, or anywhere else in the world, Agoda is ready to help you find the perfect spot to ring in the New Year.”

As travelers prepare for their New Year’s Eve plans, Agoda offers a comprehensive selection of over 4.5 million holiday properties, more than 130,000 flight routes, and over 300,000 activities, all available for seamless booking. Download the Agoda app for the latest deals or visit agoda.com/deals.

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