IBM and Groq have entered into a partnership intended to provide businesses with direct access to the GroqCloud inference technology via the former’s watsonx Orchestrate platform.

The companies aim to deliver high-speed AI inference capabilities designed to support enterprise deployment of agentic AI.

This collaboration will also see the integration and enhancement of Red Hat’s open source vLLM technology with Groq’s language processing unit architecture.

In addition, IBM Granite models are planned for future support on GroqCloud for IBM customers.

Organisations in sectors such as healthcare, finance, government, retail and manufacturing have encountered difficulties scaling AI agents from pilot projects to operational environments, mainly due to issues of speed, cost, and reliability, according to IBM.

By combining Groq’s inference performance and cost structure with IBM’s AI orchestration tools, the partnership aims to address these challenges for enterprises seeking to expand their AI operations.

GroqCloud operates on custom LPU hardware, which is said to deliver inference more than five times faster and at a lower cost compared to traditional graphics processing unit (GPU) systems. The platform provides consistently low latency and reliable performance at global scale, which is a major advantage for agentic AI deployed in regulated industries.

IBM has stated that its healthcare clients often receive thousands of complex patient queries at the same time.  The use of Groq technology enables IBM’s AI agents to process information in real-time and provide immediate responses.

Similar applications are underway in non-regulated sectors such as retail and consumer packaged goods, where clients are implementing Groq-powered human resources (HR) agents to automate HR tasks.

IBM chief commercial officer and software senior vice president Rob Thomas said: “Our partnership with Groq underscores IBM’s commitment to providing clients with the most advanced technologies to achieve AI deployment and drive business value.”

Both companies will jointly focus on delivering high-performance inference for various use cases, including customer care and employee support, with an emphasis on security and privacy for deployments subject to strict regulatory requirements.

Seamless integration with watsonx Orchestrate is planned to allow clients flexibility in adopting agentic patterns suited to their business needs.

This integration is expected to help users maintain familiar workflows while improving inference speed through GroqCloud, supporting features such as inference orchestration, load balancing, and hardware acceleration.

Groq CEO and founder Jonathan Ross said: “With Groq’s speed and IBM’s enterprise expertise, we’re making agentic AI real for business. Together, we’re enabling organisations to unlock the full potential of AI-driven responses with the performance needed to scale.

“Beyond speed and resilience, this partnership is about transforming how enterprises work with AI, moving from experimentation to enterprise-wide adoption with confidence, and opening the door to new patterns where AI can act instantly and learn continuously.”

Recently, IBM agreed to acquire Texas‑based SAP S/4HANA services provider Cognitus to bolster its SAP capabilities.

Cognitus has more than 20 years of SAP systems‑integration experience, specialising in RISE and GROW with SAP programmes, and offers a suite of AI-enabled software solutions.