The U.S. Department of Justice is probing Nvidia’s licensing deal with Groq to see if the structure was designed to dodge antitrust scrutiny.

Nvidia announced the non-exclusive Groq license in December and added several Groq executives, including founder Jonathan Ross, raising questions about the deal’s breadth and integration.

The inquiry began after the December reveal, with a formal information request in hand; penalties could follow if wrongdoing is found, though unwinding the deal is unlikely.

Market gauges show Benzinga Edge scoring strong Growth and Quality, with solid Momentum but notably low Value due to a premium valuation.

The AI value chain spans model development, training compute, and inference compute, with competition risks possible at each layer and through their interactions.

Groq’s LPX rack packs 256 processors per system and is designed to integrate with Nvidia Vera CPUs and Rubin GPUs, delivering performance well above some publicly stated benchmarks.

Nvidia holds meaningful ETF exposure across several funds, highlighting diversified institutional interest in its platform.

The probe has broader implications for major tech players like Meta, Google, and Microsoft, underscoring ongoing competition concerns in AI hardware and startup ecosystems.

Institutional investors remain confident, with Nvidia appearing in hundreds of hedge funds’ portfolios, as strategic bets around Groq and related cloud partnerships continue.

Separately, Nvidia is pursuing safeguards and shifting some practices toward in-house control, signaling broader ecosystem tensions over access to advanced AI models.

HSR thresholds for filings have risen, but meeting them doesn’t guarantee a filing; the structure and exemptions will shape whether regulators intervene.

Foundry partners differ within the Groq-Nvidia ecosystem: Samsung manufactures Groq processors while Nvidia’s GPUs are produced by TSMC.