Groq vs Grok: One Is a Chip Company, One Is Elon's Chatbot (2026)

The 30-Second Answer

If you are looking for fast inference hardware or an API that serves open models cheaply, you want Groq (with a q). It designs the LPU chip and runs GroqCloud, which serves Llama, Qwen, and GPT-OSS models at 400 to 1,000 tokens per second. Jonathan Ross, who started Google's TPU project, founded it in 2016.

If you are looking for the AI assistant on X, or an API to call xAI's models, you want Grok (with a k). It is a chatbot and model family from Elon Musk's xAI, launched in late 2023. The current flagship is grok-4.5, with grok-4.3 and grok-code-fast-1 rounding out the API lineup.

The confusion is not your fault. The names are phonetically identical, both arrived during the same AI boom, and Groq had the name and the trademark seven years before Grok existed. Groq's CEO said as much in a public cease-and-desist letter, which we cover below.

Groq vs Grok, Side by Side

The fastest way to tell them apart is to line up the facts. Almost nothing overlaps except the sound of the name.

The single biggest tell: Groq does not have a chatbot you talk to, and Grok does not sell chips or a general inference cloud. If someone says "I ran it on Groq," they served a model. If someone says "I asked Grok," they chatted with xAI.

Groq (with a q): The Chip Company

Groq is a semiconductor and cloud company. Its chip, the LPU (Language Processing Unit), is built for one job: running trained models fast. The architecture is deterministic and low-latency, which sidesteps the memory-bandwidth wall that GPUs hit during token generation. On GroqCloud that shows up as real throughput. Llama 3.1 8B Instant runs at about 840 tokens per second, GPT-OSS 20B at roughly 1,000, several times faster than a typical GPU host on the same weights.

Jonathan Ross founded Groq in 2016 with Douglas Wightman, both former Google engineers. Ross had started Google's TPU project as a 20% initiative, so the LPU comes from the same lineage of purpose-built inference silicon. The chip began life as the Tensor Streaming Processor and was rebranded to LPU after the LLM boom made language inference the dominant workload.

The money backs the hardware story. Groq's September 2025 Series E raised $750M at a $6.9B post-money valuation, led by Disruptive with BlackRock, Samsung, Cisco, and Tiger Global participating. In December 2025 Nvidia announced an agreement reported at roughly $20B to license Groq's inference technology and move several senior Groq staff to Nvidia, a rare case of the GPU incumbent paying for a rival's inference design rather than competing with it.

Groq is one of several companies that serve open coding models on custom silicon rather than stock GPUs. Morph does the same, running open-weight models on kernels tuned for code generation. See Morph Open Source Models and Fireworks AI pricing for how the inference-provider market compares.

Grok (with a k): xAI's Chatbot

Grok is the assistant from xAI, Elon Musk's AI company. It launched in November 2023, took its name and personality from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and is wired into X so it can answer with real-time posts. Grok is both a consumer chatbot and an API-accessible model family.

As of July 2026, xAI's API lists grok-4.5 as the flagship, with grok-4.3 as the primary general-purpose chat and coding model, grok-code-fast-1 (alias grok-build-0.1) for high-volume agentic coding, and grok-4.20-0309 covering reasoning, non-reasoning, and multi-agent modes. On the consumer side, access runs from a free tier through SuperGrok ($30/month) up to SuperGrok Heavy ($300/month), plus X Premium+ ($40/month) bundled through X.

Every rate doubles on prompts of 200k tokens or more. Cached input runs $0.20 to $0.50 per M. Full breakdown on our Grok API pricing page. Verify current numbers on docs.x.ai before relying on them.

The xAI API is OpenAI-compatible: point the OpenAI SDK at https://api.x.ai/v1, pass your xAI key, and set the model to grok-4.5 or grok-4.3. So Grok (the model) and Groq (the hardware that could, in principle, serve open models) are reachable through similar-looking OpenAI-shaped code, which does nothing to reduce the confusion.

GroqCloud Pricing

GroqCloud charges per token with no idle infrastructure fee. It serves open models, so the prices track model size rather than a single flagship. These are the list rates as of July 2026.

Two structural discounts matter. The Batch API halves the per-token rate for jobs you can run asynchronously (results in 24 hours to 7 days), and prompt caching gives a 50% discount on cached input with no feature fee. A free tier is available through API-key signup. Because GroqCloud serves open weights, the comparison that matters is provider-to-provider on the same model, not model-to-model.

Grok API Pricing

Grok is a closed model family, so xAI publishes one price sheet for its own models. The flagship grok-4.5 sits at the top; grok-4.3 and grok-code-fast-1 are cheaper per token for higher-volume work.

Every rate doubles once a prompt reaches 200k tokens, so grok-4.3 becomes $2.50/$5.00 per M on large-context requests. Cached input runs $0.20 to $0.50 per M depending on the model. xAI has also offered generous free API credits through its data-sharing program. For the full model-by-model breakdown and the long-context tier math, see Grok API pricing, and for how xAI's rates sit against other providers, see the LLM API pricing overview.

The Naming Collision: q Came First

Groq registered its trademark in 2016, seven years before xAI existed. When Elon Musk announced the Grok chatbot in November 2023, Groq's CEO Jonathan Ross responded with a public cease-and-desist blog post, dated November 30, 2023. It is a real letter, and it is funny on purpose.

The letter goes on in the same register. Ross wrote that he could see why xAI might want the name ("You like fast things: rockets, hyperloops, one-letter company names"), recommended Musk rename the bot to Slartibartfast (a nod to the same Hitchhiker's Guide source Grok drew from), and joked about being asked about the snarky chatbot by his great aunt over Thanksgiving dinner. Under the comedy is a straight trademark claim: Groq was first, both operate in AI, and the phonetic overlap is exactly the kind of thing that causes consumer confusion.

The trademark friction did not stop at a blog post. The USPTO reportedly rejected xAI's application to register Grok, citing similarity to Groq and to another company, Grokstream, and a separate startup has claimed rights to the Grok name in the SaaS category. The upshot for you as a reader: the two products still coexist, the search results still collide, and the safest habit is to check the consonant. q is the chip, k is the chatbot.

Which One Do You Want?

If your task is coding and you care about the inference layer, the useful frame is not Groq versus Grok, it is which provider serves the model you want, at what speed, at what price. Morph serves open coding models (GLM-5.2, DeepSeek V4, MiniMax M3, Qwen 3.5) on custom kernels through an OpenAI-compatible API, the same category Groq competes in. See Morph Open Source Models.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are Groq and Grok the same thing?

No. Groq (with a q) is an AI hardware company founded in 2016 that builds LPU inference chips and runs GroqCloud. Grok (with a k) is a chatbot and model family from Elon Musk's xAI, launched in 2023 and built into X. Separate companies, unrelated products, one consonant apart.

Is Groq owned by Elon Musk?

No. Groq the chip company was founded by Jonathan Ross and Douglas Wightman, former Google engineers, and is backed by investors like BlackRock, Samsung, and Cisco. Grok the chatbot is the one owned by Musk, through xAI. The name overlap is exactly why this gets asked.

What is the difference between an LPU and a GPU?

Groq's LPU (Language Processing Unit) is designed only for LLM inference, with a deterministic, low-latency architecture that avoids the memory-bandwidth wall GPUs hit on token generation. GroqCloud serves open models at 400 to 1,000 tokens per second as a result. GPUs stay more general-purpose and dominate training. The LPU started as Groq's Tensor Streaming Processor.

How much does GroqCloud cost?

Per token, no idle fee. As of July 2026: Llama 3.1 8B Instant $0.05/$0.08 per M, GPT-OSS 120B $0.15/$0.60, Qwen3 32B $0.29/$0.59, Llama 3.3 70B Versatile $0.59/$0.79. Free tier via API-key signup, Batch API at half price, 50% prompt-caching discount.

How much does the Grok API cost?

As of July 2026, grok-4.5 is $2.00/$6.00 per M on a 500k context, grok-4.3 is $1.25/$2.50 per M on a 1M context, and grok-code-fast-1 is $1.00/$2.00 per M on 256k. Every rate doubles on prompts of 200k tokens or more. Full detail on our Grok API pricing page.

Did Groq sue xAI over the Grok name?

Groq did not file a public lawsuit, but it did send xAI a cease-and-desist. On November 30, 2023, CEO Jonathan Ross published a humorous public letter noting the phonetic overlap and Groq's earlier trademark. The USPTO reportedly rejected xAI's Grok trademark application, citing similarity to Groq and to Grokstream.