AI chip startup Groq is seeking to raise $650 million in fresh capital from its existing investor base, according to sources cited by Axios. The San Jose-based company is positioning this funding round to accelerate growth of its inference neocloud business, which provides developers and enterprises with cloud infrastructure powered by its proprietary AI chips and systems. The fundraising effort comes just months after Groq completed a landmark $20 billion agreement with Nvidia in December. That deal, described as a "not-an-acquisition," involved several senior Groq executives departing for the chip giant and Nvidia licensing Groq's hardware technology. For Groq's existing investors, the transaction represented a significant payout, with cash distributions that would have made it Nvidia's largest acquisition if structured as a traditional purchase. Groq is now refocusing on inference computing—the processing that occurs after an AI model receives a prompt—which industry experts consider a more immediate market need than model training. The company's interim leadership team, including CEO Adam Winter and CFO Matt Eng, is steering this strategic pivot. The startup's inference cloud allows customers to host applications requiring rapid AI response times without building their own infrastructure. The $650 million round appears well-supported. Sources indicate that major backers Disruptive and Infinitium have committed to covering any unfilled portions should other existing investors decline their pro-rata allocation rights, effectively guaranteeing the full raise.