Bloomberg Talks: Jonathan Ross and Rob Thomas Talk Groq and IBM Partnership

Date: October 20, 2025
Host: Bloomberg
Guests:

• Jonathan Ross, CEO and Founder, Groq
• Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President of Software & Chief Commercial Officer, IBM

Episode Overview

This episode centers on the newly announced strategic partnership between Groq, a leader in high-speed, low-latency AI hardware (LPU – Language Processing Units), and tech giant IBM. The discussion explores how this collaboration is designed to provide enterprise customers with unprecedented AI inference capabilities, drastically lowering the cost and time for AI workloads. The conversation dives deep into go-to-market strategies, technical integration, and the broader landscape of AI infrastructure.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Strategic Partnership & Go-To-Market Approach

• IBM’s sellers will now offer Groq’s technology (LPU) as part of their portfolio, significantly expanding Groq’s reach to large enterprise clients.

• The analogy used: “Offering broadband when the world is still mostly on dial-up.” (Jonathan Ross, [01:19])

  “Our LPUs are just significantly faster, but we also keep the cost down. Just imagine if you were to offer broadband and you charged more per bit of data that was sent over the line. It would be uneconomical. Broadband increases the demand.”
  – Jonathan Ross ([01:19])

• The goal is to enable “ultra-high speed, low latency AI” for enterprises, especially crucial for real-time, agentic use cases.

2. Economic Structure of the Deal

• IBM’s strategy: Leverage Groq’s hardware to boost the speed and cost-efficiency of its Watson X platform.

• Revenue sharing is confirmed as part of the deal; IBM is looking for 5x performance improvement at 20% of the cost.

  “This partnership is all about what Jonathan said, which is 5x performance at 20% of cost. We've seen it with Watson X running on Groq.”
  – Rob Thomas ([02:23])

• IBM has a $7.5B AI business with Watson X and is focused on helping clients deploy AI faster.

3. Real Client Impact & Adoption

• Use cases include call centers, supply chains, and “multimodal” AI (processing multiple types of data—text, image, etc. simultaneously).

• Financial services have led initial adoption.

  “Some of that changes how your call center operates or how your supply chain runs. And then you combine that with a fraction of the cost, suddenly the economics make sense.”
  – Rob Thomas ([03:13])

• IBM aims to achieve $4.5B in productivity gains using AI internally by year’s end.

4. Technical Integration & User Experience

• Groq’s LPU tech will be invisibly integrated into IBM’s Watson X API.

• Users will experience faster results with no extra effort.

  “It'll be invisible to most users. It'll simply work... You should just get more speed. Just imagine one day you come home, you had dial up, and now you have broadband and it costs less.”
  – Jonathan Ross ([04:13])

• Deeper integration work continues (e.g., on VLLM, a scalable inference library).

5. Demand, Supply, and Scalability

• Global demand for AI compute greatly outpaces supply.

• Groq claims a faster-ramping supply chain, but overall constraints are expected for 5–10 years.

  “The entire world is supply constrained and I would actually expect that to continue for at least the next five to ten years...the sooner you get access to that capacity, the sooner you're going to have it.”
  – Jonathan Ross ([05:45])

• Early access via IBM is advised for customers experiencing rapid growth.

6. Openness vs. Exclusivity in AI Partnerships

• IBM is open to continued partnerships across the AI ecosystem (Anthropic, Mistral, Llama, etc.) even while prioritizing acceleration with Groq.

  “With grok, we are open to working with anybody in the ecosystem of AI...But when you think broadly about what's happening in AI, we have many companies working with us on agents.”
  – Rob Thomas ([06:50])

7. Dual Go-to-Market Channels

• Groq benefits from both “bottoms-up” (developer-led adoption) and “top-down” (enterprise agreements via IBM).

  “I'm in meetings where the CTO did that and the response from the person is, ‘I already use Groq. It's my default for everything.’”
  – Jonathan Ross ([07:54])

• Groq has 2.3 million developers already using their platform.

  “For comparison, OpenAI has 4 million.”
  – Jonathan Ross ([08:07])

• The IBM partnership acts like a “peanut butter and jelly relationship,” combining IBM's reach & trust with Groq’s innovative tech.

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Jonathan Ross (on user experience):
  “You don't ask a question, wait 10 minutes later, and come back. You'd rather get the answer in under a minute.” ([01:32])

• Rob Thomas (on AI’s economic impact):
  “The number one question I get from clients now is how are you doing that at IBM and can you help us do that? And we think the combination of IBM and GROK can make this a reality for any company.” ([03:40])

• Jonathan Ross (summarizing their synergy with IBM):
  "This is a peanut butter and jelly sort of relationship...We already have the bottoms up...Now, going to those deep relationships from IBM...you put those two together and that's an amazing go to market motion." ([07:51])

Timestamps for Key Segments

• [01:10] — Jonathan Ross explains the strategic value of the partnership and the analogy to broadband.
• [02:13] — Rob Thomas details the revenue-sharing structure and economic impact.
• [03:11] — Discussing direct business impact and adoption (call centers, supply chains, productivity).
• [04:06] — Jonathan Ross describes the technical integration ("it will simply work").
• [04:52] — Rob Thomas discusses sources of demand and shift to multimodal AI.
• [05:43] — Jonathan Ross on global AI hardware supply constraints.
• [06:48] — Rob Thomas on partnership openness and the AI ecosystem.
• [07:50] — Jonathan Ross on dual go-to-market approach and comparing Groq to OpenAI developer reach.

Summary Table

| Topic | Speaker(s) | Timestamp | Key Insight/Quote | |------------------------------------------|---------------|------------|----------------------------------------------| | Strategic Partnership & Go-to-Market | Ross, Thomas | 01:10–02:00| "You could think of it like broadband..." | | Economics of the Deal | Rob Thomas | 02:13–02:56| "5x performance at 20% of cost..." | | Client Impact & Adoption | Rob Thomas | 03:11–03:55| "Changes how your call center operates..." | | Technical Integration | Jonathan Ross | 04:06–04:37| "It'll be invisible to most users..." | | Demand, Supply, Scalability | Jonathan Ross | 05:43–06:34| "The entire world is supply constrained..." | | Open Partnerships | Rob Thomas | 06:48–07:28| "We are open to working with anybody..." | | Dual Go-to-Market Synergy | Jonathan Ross | 07:50–08:33| "Peanut butter and jelly..." |

In summary:
IBM and Groq’s partnership aims to redefine the speed and cost efficiency of enterprise AI workloads, blending Groq’s technical advantages with IBM’s enterprise relationships. Early results show strong adoption in financial services, with both companies stressing seamless integration, supply realities, and long-term, open-ended industry collaboration. The podcast offers a succinct but substantive look into the future of enterprise AI infrastructure.