Nvidia challenger Groq expands with first European data center

Groq said it has established its first European data center in partnership with Equinix

The AI semiconductor startup is looking to take advantage of rising demand for AI services in Europe ing other U

Companies also ramping up investment in the region

Groq, which is backed by investment arms of Samsung and Cisco, said the data center will be in Helsinki, Finland

David Paul | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesArtificial intelligence semiconductor startup Groq on Monday announced it has established its first data center in Europe as it steps up its international expansion

Groq, which is backed by investment arms of Samsung and Cisco, said the data center will be located in Helsinki, Finland and is in partnership with Equinix

Groq is looking to take advantage of rising demand for AI services in Europe ing other U

Firms which have also ramped up investment in the region

The Nordics in particular is a location for the data facilities as the region has easy access to renewable energy and cooler climates

Last month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was in Europe and signed several infrastructure deals, including data centers

It is designed for inferencing rather training

Inferencing is when a pre-trained AI model interprets data to come up with a result, much the answers that are duced by chatbots

While Nvidia has a stranglehold on the chips required for training huge AI models with its graphics cessing units (GPUs), there is a swathe of startups hoping to take a slice of the pie when it comes to inferencing

SambaNova; Ampere, a company SoftBank is in the cess of purchasing; Cerebras and Fractile, are all looking to join the AI inference race

There are a number of areas where Groq wants to stand out from its rivals, including Nvidia, according to CEO Jonathan Ross

In a Monday interview with CNBC, Ross said that Nvidia chips will use expensive components such as high-bandwidth memory, which currently have very few suppliers

Groq's LPUs meanwhile do not use such chips, and the company's supply chain is broadly based in North America. "We're not as supply limited, and that's important for inference, which is very high volume, low margin," Ross told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe. ""And the reason that we're so good for Nvidia's holders is, we're happy to take that high volume but lower margin and let others focus on the high-margin training. "Ross also touted Groq's ability to deploy its nology at speed

He said that the company decided four weeks ago to build the data center in Helsinki is currently unloading its server racks into the location now. "We expect to be serving traffic starting by the end of this week

That's built fast and so it's a very different position from what you see in the rest of the market," Ross said

European politicians have been pushing the notion of sovereign AI — where data centers must be located in the region

Data centers that are located closer to users also help imve the speed of services

Global data center builder Equinix connects different cloud viders together, such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, making it easier for es to have multiple vendors

Groq's LPUs will be installed inside the Equinix data center allowing es to access Groq's inference capabilities via Equinix

Groq currently has data centers in the U

And Canada and Saudi Arabia with its nology.