Groq Hires Meta Veteran Ola Kasali Amid Nvidia Partnership

Groq, an AI chipmaker and Nvidia-adjacent firm, has hired Ola Kasali as its head of network and data center engineering. Kasali joins Groq after almost 12 years at Meta, where she served as a lead network engineer before becoming manager for network deployment and support in 2021.

Kasali expressed her enthusiasm about joining Groq on LinkedIn, highlighting the growing demand for AI inference infrastructure: 'As AI capabilities grow, so does the demand for inference and the infrastructure required to deliver it at scale. I'm looking forward to helping scale the network and datacenter infrastructure powering it, while building an exceptional team of infrastructure talent.'

Groq's recent growth has been significant, despite its virtual acqui-hire by Nvidia earlier this year. In March, Nvidia released the Nvidia Groq 3 LPU, designed for ultra-low-latency AI inference workloads. This follows a $20 billion deal between the two companies that saw Nvidia license Groq's tech and absorb some of its talent.

Groq has been expanding its operations, with plans to scale from 54 megawatts (MW) of compute to over 200MW in 2027 as it expands its GroqCloud inference offering. In August, the firm raised $350 million at a valuation of $3.5 billion.