IBM (NYSE: IBM) and Groq today announced a strategic technology and go-to-market partnership aimed at delivering enterprise clients immediate access to Groq’s high-performance inference platform, GroqCloud, through IBM’s watsonx Orchestrate. This collaboration enables faster, cost-efficient AI inference, supporting the rapid deployment of agentic AI at scale. As part of the initiative, Groq and IBM plan to integrate and enhance Red Hat’s open-source vLLM technology with Groq’s LPU architecture. Additionally, IBM Granite models will be available on GroqCloud for IBM clients.
Enterprises transitioning AI agents from pilot programs to production often face challenges around speed, cost, and reliability, particularly in mission-critical sectors like healthcare, finance, government, retail, and manufacturing. This partnership combines Groq’s accelerated inference, cost efficiency, and access to the latest open-source models with IBM’s agentic AI orchestration, providing the infrastructure necessary to scale AI effectively.
Powered by Groq’s custom LPU, GroqCloud delivers inference that is more than five times faster and more cost-efficient than traditional GPU-based systems, ensuring consistently low latency and reliable performance, even at global scale. This capability is particularly impactful for regulated industries leveraging agentic AI. For instance, IBM healthcare clients handling thousands of complex patient queries simultaneously can use Groq-powered AI agents to analyze and respond in real-time, enhancing customer experiences and enabling faster, data-driven decision-making. In non-regulated industries, IBM clients in retail and consumer packaged goods are deploying Groq to support HR agents, automating workflows, and boosting employee productivity.
“While enterprises have multiple options during AI experimentation, moving into production requires ensuring that complex workflows deliver consistently high-quality outcomes,” said Rob Thomas, SVP, Software and Chief Commercial Officer at IBM. “Our partnership with Groq reflects IBM’s commitment to providing clients with advanced technologies to accelerate AI adoption and drive measurable business value.”
“Combining Groq’s performance with IBM’s enterprise expertise makes agentic AI a practical reality for businesses,” said Jonathan Ross, CEO & Founder of Groq. “This partnership enables organizations to harness AI-driven insights at scale, moving beyond experimentation to enterprise-wide adoption with confidence, while unlocking new opportunities for AI to act and learn in real-time.”
IBM clients can access GroqCloud capabilities immediately, with joint teams focusing on delivering:
- High-speed, high-performance inference to fully leverage AI models and agentic AI, supporting customer care, employee support, and productivity use cases.
- Security and privacy-focused deployments that meet stringent regulatory requirements and enable reliable execution of complex workflows.
- Seamless integration with watsonx Orchestrate, allowing clients to adopt agentic AI patterns tailored to diverse business needs.
The partnership also plans to integrate and enhance Red Hat’s open-source vLLM with Groq’s LPU architecture, addressing key developer challenges such as inference orchestration, load balancing, and hardware acceleration. This integration enables enterprises to continue using familiar tools while accelerating inference through GroqCloud, streamlining AI operations.
Together, IBM and Groq deliver enterprise AI that is fast, intelligent, and engineered for real-world impact.
Statements regarding IBM’s and Groq’s future plans are forward-looking, subject to change, and represent objectives rather than guarantees.
About IBM
IBM is a leading global provider of hybrid cloud, AI, and consulting services, helping clients in more than 175 countries turn data into actionable insights, streamline operations, and gain a competitive edge. Governments and organizations in critical sectors such as finance, telecommunications, and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to accelerate secure digital transformation. IBM’s innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-focused cloud solutions, and consulting provide open, flexible, and trusted solutions. Learn more at www.ibm.com.
About Groq
Groq delivers high-speed, cost-efficient AI inference infrastructure. Founded in 2016, Groq developed the LPU and GroqCloud to accelerate compute performance and reduce costs. Today, Groq is trusted by over two million developers worldwide and is a core component of the American AI technology stack.
