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Luke Kawa

Nvidia strikes licensing agreement with AI inference specialist Groq

Nvidia reached an agreement to work with AI chip startup Groq to enhance its inference capabilities.

CNBC is calling this a $20 billion acquisition in cash, citing the top investor in Groq’s latest financing round (which valued it at roughly $6.9 billion in September). Groq’s press release on the matter, however, refers to this only as a “non-exclusive licensing agreement” and says “Groq will continue to operate as an independent company,” with no financial details provided. The lack of an official acquisition may be a bid to duck any potential antitrust concerns.

However, this is definitively an acqui-hire, as Groq founder Jonathan Ross and President Sunny Madra, as well as other members of their team, will be joining the chip designer “to help advance and scale the licensed technology.”

Inference is the “thinking” part of AI models — as opposed to training, which is more of the “learning.” Groq’s AI chips are LPUs (language processing units), distinct from GPUs (graphics processing units) or TPUs (tensor processing units). The company boasts that these chips “run Large Language Models (LLMs) and other leading models at substantially faster speeds and, on an architectural level, up to 10x more efficiently from an energy perspective compared to GPUs.” These products don’t need external high-bandwidth memory chips, which are facing a supply crunch, but rather use a different method of on-chip memory: SRAM, or static random-access memory.

Through this deal, Nvidia is likely looking to boost the efficiency of its AI solutions in a power-hungry (and scarce) world. It may also be viewed as a response to the success of Google’s Gemini 3 model, which utilizes TPUs that are also cheaper to operate than Nvidia’s GPUs. (In a fun twist, Ross, the Groq founder, was one of the architects of what would become Google’s first TPU during his time with the search giant).

“We plan to integrate Groq’s low-latency processors into the NVIDIA AI factory architecture, extending the platform to serve an even broader range of AI inference and real-time workloads,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang wrote in an email to employees, as reported by CNBC.

Good news for Groq is also good news for one of America’s most controversial and outspoken venture capitalists: Chamath Palihapitiya, whose Social Capital fund was an early investor in the company. Chamath’s SPACs have generally tended to go over like a lead zeppelin, but this investment is already a massive winner.

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Hyunsoo Rim

Nvidia rises on report that the US has cleared H200 chip sales in China for 10 firms, Foxconn's profit beat adds to the optimism

Nvidia rose ~2% in premarket trading Thursday after two early-morning developments added to optimism around the chipmaker’s AI business: a report that the US has cleared H200 chip sales to around 10 Chinese firms, and a profit beat from its key server partner Hon Hai (also known as Foxconn).

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Exclusive: US clears H200 chip sales to 10 China firms as Nvidia CEO looks for breakthrough

Exclusive: US clears H200 chip sales to 10 China firms as Nvidia CEO looks for breakthrough
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J. Edward Moreno

Doximity sinks on gloomy full-year revenue outlook, says AI compute costs are weighing on margins

Doximity plunged in premarket trading after it reported quarterly earnings results that missed Wall Street expectations and gave a disappointing full-year outlook as high AI costs weigh on margins.

For its fiscal Q4 2026, which represents the first three months of this year, the company reported adjusted earnings per share of $0.26, below the $0.28 analysts polled by FactSet were penciling in. Doximity said the profit miss was “driven by AI compute costs.”

And those higher AI costs will follow them into the current fiscal year, which ends next March. For FY 2027, it expects adjusted EBITDA to hit between $323 million and $335 million, lower than the $349.5 million analysts were expecting. Doximity expects FY 2027 revenue to come in between $664 million and $676 million — also below the $682 million that analysts had forecasted.

Doximity, which makes digital tools for healthcare professionals, is building AI products for tasks like medical scribing. Last year, Doximity acquired Pathway Medical, a medical AI startup, for $63 million “and now we're spending against the opportunity it unlocked,” CEO Jeffrey A. Tangney told analysts.

Tangney said the company has “forecasted minimal AI revenue contribution this fiscal year, while allowing for a wider range of AI investments and related expenses, meaning higher R&D, compute and marketing spend, that will weigh on near-term margins.”

“We think that's the right trade,” Tangney said. “This is our AI investment year.”

markets
Paige Oamek

Lightwave Logic drops following Q1 earnings

Lightwave Logic released its Q1 earnings report Wednesday postmarket. The company reported increasing shortfalls as the photonics company continues to scale. Investors reacted by pushing the stock slightly down after-hours.

Here are the numbers: 

  • Revenue of $29,000, 27% growing year-over-year.

  • Net loss of $6.3 million, widening 34% year-over-year.

The material photonics company, which designs and provides polymers to speed the flow of information from chip to chip, hit a four-year high this week and has risen nearly 400% since January. Daily options volumes on the stock hit a record high ahead of this release.

The stock has been boosted by an explosion of AI data center demand and interest in the growing industry of photonic integrated circuits for data center connectivity.

On their afternoon earnings call, Lightwave Logic CEO Yves LeMaitre reiterated that he believes the company is "positioned to help address some of the most important challenges facing AI infrastructure over the coming decade."

markets
Helena Cheng

USA Rare Earth gains after delivering better-than-expected quarterly results

USA Rare Earth is rising in postmarket trading after releasing better-than-expected Q1 results.

Key numbers:

  • Revenue of $5.67 million (compared to analyst estimates of $4.22 million).

  • An adjusted loss per share of $0.12 (estimate: a $0.14 loss).

Management aims to achieve 3,000 metric tons per annum of run rate for metal-making and alloy capacity by year-end, along with 600 MTPA of run rate for magnet manufacturing capacity.

The results come during a period of unease in the global rare earth market. China previously moved to drastically curb critical mineral access in October, adding five new elements to its export controls and freezing supplies to semiconductor manufacturers. These materials may be on the agenda during discussions between US and Chinese leadership this week.

In response, the US has scrambled to build domestic production buffers. In January 2026, USA Rare Earth secured a landmark $1.6 billion government-backed package from the Department of Commerce, which included a $1.3 billion senior secured loan under the CHIPS and Science Act and $277 million in direct incentives in exchange for a 10% federal equity stake.

The company also announced a definitive agreement to acquire Serra Verde Group, owner of the Pela Ema rare earth mine and processing plant in Goiás, Brazil. The $2.8 billion acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of 2026, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals.

markets
Paige Oamek

Cisco surges on Q3 earnings beat and better-than-expected Q4 outlook

Cisco rose double digits after beating Q3 revenue and earnings estimates and giving optimistic projections due to increasing demand from the AI industry.

Shares were 13% higher in after-hours trading.

The tech company reported: 

  • Q3 revenue of $15.8 billion (compared to analyst estimates of $15.6 billion).

  • Q3 adjusted earnings per share of $1.06 (estimate: $1.04).

  • Q4 revenue guidance between $16.7 billion and $16.9 billion (estimate: $15.8 billion).

  • Q4 adjusted earnings guidance of $1.16 to $1.18 (estimate: $1.07).

Management upped its outlook for expected orders from hyperscalers this fiscal year to $9 billion from $5 billion.

Shares in the company have climbed more than 60% over the past calendar year and traded at record highs this week — surpassing $100 on Wednesday afternoon — fully riding the AI infrastructure wave. All these data centers need Cisco’s networking equipment as well as more from the likes of Arista Networks and HP Enterprise, both of which are being boosted postmarket from these results.

Chuck Robbins, chair and CEO of Cisco, said:

“Cisco is well positioned as the critical infrastructure for the AI era, building on our technology leadership and customer trust, while innovating at the speed and scale that our dynamic world demands.”

While demand for Cisco’s products has been climbing, the price of memory also remains elevated — which can create tension between booming sales and pressure on profitability.

Looking toward the full year, the company updated its outlook to expect revenue ranging between $62.8 billion and $63.0 billion, ahead of analysts’ estimates of $61.1 billion.

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