IBM and Groq have entered into a strategic go-to-market and technology partnership that will make it possible for enterprise customers to access Groq’s inference technology, GroqCloud, immediately integrated with IBM watsonx Orchestrate platform. The partnership is meant to make high-speed AI inference capabilities accessible at an affordable rate, enabling speedy deployment of agentic AI across sectors.
The agreement also involves proposals to combine and build on Red Hat’s open-source vLLM technology with Groq’s Language Processing Unit (LPU) hardware architecture. Also, IBM Granite models are to be supported on GroqCloud for IBM customers.
Companies moving AI agents from pilot to widespread production typically face issues involving speed, expense, and dependability, specifically in mission-critical industries like healthcare, finance, government, retail, and manufacturing. This partnership marries Groq’s accelerated inference performance and value with IBM’s agentic AI orchestration, delivering the scale infrastructure required to propel enterprise-class AI deployments.
Driven by Groq’s proprietary LPU, GroqCloud provides more than five times faster and more cost-effective inference than standard GPU-based systems, with the guarantee of consistently low latency and reliable performance even as workloads grow worldwide. This capability is particularly valuable for agentic AI use cases in regulated markets.
For example, IBM’s healthcare customers get thousands of sophisticated patient questions at once. IBM’s AI agents, with Groq technology, can process information in real-time and give timely accurate responses, creating better customer experiences and allowing organizations to make quicker, more intelligent decisions.
This technology is also being used in unregulated domains. IBM customers in retail and consumer packaged goods are using Groq for HR agents to promote automation of HR functions and boost employee productivity.
Critical Benefits of the IBM and Groq Alliance:
High-Speed, High-Performance Inference: Maximizes the full capabilities of AI models and agentic AI, driving use cases like customer service, employee assistance, and productivity boost.
Security and Privacy-Centric AI Deployment: Built to facilitate the most demanding regulatory and security demands, facilitating streamlined execution of sophisticated workflows.
Non-Interruptive Integration with IBM’s Agentic Product, watsonx Orchestrate: Offers customers the versatility to embrace purpose-designed agentic patterns that fit a wide range of use cases.
Rob Thomas, IBM Senior Vice President of Software and Chief Commercial Officer, underscored, “Many big enterprise customers have a variety of choices with AI inferencing when they’re testing, but once they want to go into production, they need to make sure that complicated workflows are deployable successfully in order to deliver high-quality experiences. Our collaboration with Groq reflects IBM’s dedication to giving customers the latest technology to deliver AI deployment and business value.”
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Jonathan Ross, Founder and CEO of Groq, said, “With the speed of Groq and the enterprise acumen of IBM, we’re making agentic AI a reality for business. Together, we’re helping organizations unlock the full potential of AI-driven responses with the performance to scale. Beyond speed and resilience, this is about changing the way enterprises work with AI, from experimentation to enterprise-wide adoption with confidence, and opening the door to new patterns where AI can respond instantly and learn continuously.”
IBM will provide access to the capabilities of GroqCloud immediately. The combined teams will prioritize enabling the following capabilities for IBM customers, including:
High-Speed and High-Performance Inference: Maximizes the potential of AI models and agentic AI, driving applications like customer service, employee assistance, and productivity improvement.
Security and Privacy-Centric AI Deployment: Built to meet the most stringent security and regulatory needs, facilitating efficient execution of intricate workflows.
Seamless Integration with IBM‘s Agentic Product, watsonx Orchestrate: Offers customers flexibility to implement purpose-built agentic patterns that suit a variety of use cases.
