American AI chip startup Groq will partner with Aramco Digital to establish what would be the world’s largest AI inference data center in Saudi Arabia.
Shortly after announcing a tie up with Accenture earlier this month to develop a comprehensive generative AI learning platform, Aramco Digital reports that it has signed an MOU with U.S. startup Groq intended to revolutionize data processing and analytics across various sectors.
An AI inference data center is a specialized facility designed to handle the computational demands of real-time artificial intelligence applications. These centers are equipped with high-performance hardware, such as GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) and TPUs (Tensor Processing Units), that are optimized for running complex AI models.
According to it’s press release, the Aramco Digital/Groq facility, “will process billions of tokens per day by the end of 2024 and be able to onboard hundreds of thousands of developers in the region and then hundreds of billions of tokens per day with millions of developers by 2025, setting a new industry standard and bringing advanced technology from Groq to the Kingdom.”
Set to launch by the end of 2024, the data center will initially feature 19,000 language processing units, with the potential to expand to 200,000 units in the future.
Founded in 2016 by a group of former Google engineers, Groq has rapidly made a name for itself in the AI space with its Tensor Processing Unit (TPU). The company was recently valued at $2.8 billion after raising $640 million in a Series D funding round led by Cisco Investments, Samsung Catalyst Fund, and BlackRock Private Equity Partners.
Aramco Digital, launched in January 2023, was created to bring Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies to bare on enhancing efficiencies and finding smarter ways of working, and spearhead AI and digital innovation worldwide.
According to Groq Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Ross, Aramco will fund the development that is expected to cost “in the order of nine figures.” Aramco is “planning to do massive capital deployments for this, and it is a way to help diversify the economy away from oil.”
By building the data center in Saudi Arabia, Groq aims to capitalize on the country’s low energy costs, availability of land, and access to 4 billion people within a 100 millisecond ping – a measure of how quickly data can travel between processing location and users.
Groq said it does not expect to face any US government restrictions on its plans to boost its presence in Saudi Arabia, including establishing a regional headquarters in Riyadh. “We’ve been very open with Commerce about our intent to deploy here,” Ross said. “We voluntarily decided not to sell to any Chinese companies or entities even before this crackdown.”
Groq could look at working with the Saudi oil producer on other projects in the future, Ross said. “The expectation is that we’re going to partner with Aramco Digitial for quite a bit of our deployment in this region and anywhere we can,” he said. “They’ve been a great partner so we would work with them anywhere we could.”
Tareq Amin, CEO of Aramco Digital, stated, “With the support of the Kingdom’s leadership, we are proud to partner with Groq to develop a world-leading inferencing data center in Saudi Arabia. This initiative not only aims to create the largest facility of its kind but also ensures seamless access to advanced AI computing power for everyone, offered through our digital marketplace, nawat, in a flexible ‘as-a-Service’ model. Our collaboration with Groq aligns directly with Vision 2030, promoting the localization of advanced technologies, driving innovation, enhancing sustainability, and reinforcing digital excellence within the Kingdom.”
