AI Chipmaker Groq Launches First European Data Center Amid Growing Regional Demand

Artificial intelligence semiconductor startup Groq has established its first European data center, marking a significant step in its global expansion, CNBC reports.

The facility, located in Helsinki, Finland, was developed in partnership with data infrastructure provider Equinix, the company announced on Monday.

Groq’s move comes amid rising demand for AI services across Europe and follows a broader trend of US-based technology firms investing in the region. Favorable conditions in the Nordics—such as reliable access to renewable energy and cooler temperatures beneficial for data center efficiency—have made the area a preferred destination for infrastructure projects.

The startup, which is valued at $2.8 billion and backed by investment arms of Samsung and Cisco, specializes in AI inference hardware. Its signature chip, the Language Processing Unit (LPU), is designed specifically for inferencing—the stage of AI where trained models process live data and generate results, such as those seen in chatbots and recommendation engines.

While Nvidia dominates the AI training chip market with its high-powered graphics processing units (GPUs), companies like Groq, SambaNova, Cerebras, and Ampere are targeting the inference segment. This phase is characterized by high usage volumes but typically lower profit margins, an area Groq CEO Jonathan Ross believes offers a strategic opportunity.

“We’re not as supply limited, and that’s important for inference,” Ross said in an interview with CNBC.

Unlike Nvidia, whose chips rely heavily on high-bandwidth memory components sourced from a limited number of suppliers, Groq’s LPUs are built without such dependencies and rely on a supply chain primarily based in North America.

Ross also emphasized Groq’s ability to deploy infrastructure rapidly. He noted that the company decided just four weeks ago to build the Helsinki data center, and it is already unloading server racks, with traffic expected to begin flowing by the end of the week.

“This is a very different proposition from what you see in the rest of the market,” he said, pointing to the company’s speed and flexibility.

Equinix, a global data center provider, will host Groq’s LPUs at its Helsinki site. This setup allows businesses using Equinix to access Groq’s inference technology and integrate it alongside services from other cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud.

Groq’s expansion aligns with growing interest in “sovereign AI” among European policymakers, who have increasingly advocated for locally hosted data centers to ensure control over data and improve service speed by reducing latency.