Groq

Groq is an AI hardware and inference company that has built Language Processing Units (LPUs) — custom ASICs specifically designed for sequential LLM inference — that deliver dramatically higher token generation throughput than GPU-based inference clusters. Groq's cloud inference API (GroqCloud) provides access to open-source models (Llama 3.1, Mixtral, Gemma) at speeds exceeding 800 tokens/second — 10–20x faster than GPU-based inference APIs. Groq's architectural advantage stems from the LPU's deterministic on-chip SRAM execution model, which eliminates the memory bandwidth bottlenecks that limit GPU throughput for sequential autoregressive token generation. This makes Groq particularly valuable for latency-sensitive applications: real-time voice agents, interactive coding assistants, and live customer-facing AI features where response speed directly impacts user experience. GroqCloud offers an OpenAI-compatible API endpoint, meaning applications using the OpenAI Python or JS client can switch to Groq inference by changing one environment variable — with zero code changes.