Inference shift from training to serving creates opportunities for AI chip startups. Nvidia's $20B Groq acquihire validates disaggregated compute strategies. Nvidia's $20 billion Groq acquihire in December 2025 signaled that inference workloads are reshaping the AI chip market. For startups vying for a slice of Nvidia's pie, it's now or never. Key facts Nvidia acquired Groq for $20 billion in December 2025. Lumai targets 1 exaOPS in 10kW power budget by 2029. AWS uses Trainium for prefill, Cerebras for decode. Intel partners with SambaNova for decode reference design. Lumai runs Llama 3.1 8B and 70B models today. AI adoption is reaching an inflection point as the focus shifts from training new models to serving them. Compared to training, inference is a much more diverse workload, presenting an opportunity for chip startups to carve out a niche. Large batch inference requires a different mix of compute, memory, and bandwidth than an AI assistant or code agent.…