Groq, the US-based AI chipmaker, has launched its first European data center in Helsinki, accelerating its global expansion and tapping into the rising demand for sovereign AI infrastructure. Developed in partnership with Equinix, the facility will host Groq's proprietary Language Processing Units (LPUs), engineered for fast deployment and cost-efficient AI inference at scale.
Regina Donato Dahlström, managing director for the Nordics at Equinix, cited Finland's clean energy mix, naturally cool climate, and robust power grid as ideal conditions for AI infrastructure. Equinix operates five data centers in Helsinki, though Groq has not specified which location it is using.
In an interview with CNBC, Groq CEO and founder Jonathan Ross said Groq's LPUs sidestep the supply constraints tied to Nvidia's reliance on high-bandwidth memory (HBM). With its supply chain largely concentrated in North America, Groq can meet inference demand faster and at lower cost. The Helsinki deployment was finalized just four weeks ago, with servers already installed and scheduled to go live this week.
Groq previously partnered with Equinix at its Texas site and also runs data centers in Canada and Saudi Arabia. In February, it received a US$1.5 billion investment to expand its Dammam facility, supporting the Saudi Data and AI Authority's (SDAIA) Arabic-language large language model (LLM) initiative, ALLaM.
Competing with Nvidia, SambaNova, and Cerebras in the fast-growing AI inference market, Groq raised US$640 million in August 2024 from investors including Samsung Electronics and Cisco, pushing its valuation to approximately US$2.8 billion.
Article edited by Jack Wu
