Nvidia (NVDA) stock fell 0.91% as reports emerged that the U.S. Justice Department is investigating the chipmaker’s $20 billion licensing deal with AI chip startup Groq.
The probe centers on whether Nvidia structured the transaction to sidestep antitrust review. The New York Times first reported the investigation, with Bloomberg later confirming the confidential inquiry.
The deal was announced in December. Under its terms, Nvidia acquired rights to Groq’s technology while Groq remained an independent company. Groq CEO Jonathan Ross and COO Sunny Madra both moved to Nvidia as part of the arrangement.
Groq did not submit the transaction for antitrust review, which has drawn attention from regulators. The DOJ’s questioning into the deal began earlier this year as part of a broader antitrust investigation into Nvidia.
U.S. lawmakers have pushed back on the structure, calling it an effective takeover that could harm competition in the AI chip market. Nvidia, for its part, has defended the deal strongly.
“The Groq story is a prime example of the American system working as designed to promote innovation, reward entrepreneurs, and benefit consumers,” an Nvidia spokesperson said.
The probe could ultimately close without any enforcement action.
On the product side, the Groq 3 LPX rack is now in full production and set for deployment at neocloud Nebius later this year. Each liquid-cooled rack holds 256 Groq chips and is paired with Nvidia’s Vera CPUs and Rubin GPUs.
Nvidia says the rack delivers 3,400 tokens per second, well above the 750 tokens per second OpenAI has promised for its Cerebras-powered Ultrafast mode. Groq’s chips are made by Samsung, unlike Nvidia’s own GPUs, which are manufactured by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing.
The $20 billion deal is the largest in Nvidia’s history. Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon told CNBC that Nvidia is financially strong enough to absorb a deal of this size without straining its balance sheet.
Nvidia was held by 285 hedge funds in Q2 2026, up from 275 in Q1. Rival AMD was held by 164 hedge funds over the same period.
Nebius is currently the only confirmed cloud provider set to deploy the Groq rack. Nvidia is also running several other large bets at the same time, including commitments of up to $100 billion to OpenAI and $5 billion to Intel.
The DOJ investigation into the Groq licensing deal is ongoing.
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