The U.S. Department of Justice has formally opened an antitrust investigation into Nvidia’s $17 billion arrangement with AI chip startup Groq, escalating an inquiry that began after the December 2025 agreement was announced. The department has sent Nvidia a formal demand for information, according to reporting by The New York Times and Reuters. The investigation focuses on whether Nvidia used a non-exclusive license for Groq’s inference-chip technology and the recruitment of Groq founder Jonathan Ross, president Sunny Madra and other senior leaders to obtain the practical benefits of an acquisition without filing under the Hart-Scott-Rodino Act. No violation has been established. Nvidia says the arrangement promotes innovation, rewards entrepreneurs and benefits consumers. The deal left Groq nominally independent, but Nvidia unveiled an inference processor incorporating Groq technology less than three months after the agreement was announced. Groq’s architecture uses on-chip SRAM rather than off-chip high-bandwidth memory, a design intended to improve performance during the decode phase of large-language-model inference. The investigation could result in civil penalties rather than unwinding the integrated transaction and may establish a precedent for similar AI talent and technology deals involving Microsoft, Google and Meta.