Groq vs Grok: The chip company and the SpaceX chatbot are 7 years and one letter apart

Groq and Grok are not the same company, product, or category of technology. Groq, founded in 2016, sells fast inference hardware and cloud capacity that other companies' AI models run on.

Grok is the chatbot and model line built by xAI, which SpaceX acquired on February 2, 2026, and which publishes under the SpaceXAI name.

The one-letter overlap produced a real cease-and-desist letter in November 2023 and a trademark application that stayed suspended at the US Patent and Trademark Office into 2025.

The two names answer different questions, and the table below shows which.

Groq and Grok difference

A token is a small piece of text, about part of a word. AI companies charge per 1 million tokens, written as 1M.

Note: † prices and limits from each company's own pages, collected 2026-10-01. ‡ reported by news and legal press, not confirmed by the company itself; sources named below.

Input is the text you send in. Output is the text the model writes back.

Where these facts come from

Every fact here comes from company pages, company announcements and named news and legal reports, collected on October 1, 2026.

LLM Waves Research did not test either service. Where two sources disagree, both are shown. Definitions are on the methodology page.

This comparison covers who owns each name, when things happened, prices and the trademark fight. It does not judge chat quality, because the two products do different jobs.

What Groq actually is

Groq makes computer chips for running AI models, and rents them out through the cloud. The cloud here means Groq's own computers, which you use over the internet. Groq calls its chips Language Processing Units.

Jonathan Ross and Douglas Wightman started Groq in 2016 in Mountain View, California. A trademark is a legally protected brand name. A Vencounsel legal analysis says Groq Inc. holds a federal trademark for GROQ, for AI software and hardware.

Groq got it before the Grok chatbot launched.

Groq opened GroqCloud to developers on February 19, 2024. That was three months after Grok first came out.

In December 2025, Nvidia signed a deal to use Groq technology. The deal is non-exclusive, which means Groq can still offer that technology to others.

The Groq newsroom post, dated December 24, 2025, says Groq "will continue to operate as an independent company." Simon Edwards became chief executive.

On August 17, 2026, TechCrunch reported that Groq raised $350 million. Investors valued the company at $3.5 billion, down from $6.9 billion in September 2025.

Groq is moving from selling chips to running a bigger cloud that also uses Nvidia chips.

What Grok actually is

Grok is a chatbot and a line of AI models made by xAI. xAI first gave Grok to X Premium+ subscribers in late November 2023. TechCrunch reported the plan on November 22, 2023.

SpaceX bought xAI on February 2, 2026, according to the xAI joins SpaceX post. The company's pages and developer guides now use the name SpaceXAI.

The name comes from the word "grok." Robert A. Heinlein made up that word in his 1961 book Stranger in a Strange Land. It means to understand something deeply, according to Wikipedia.

The newest Grok model is Grok 4.7, released September 21, 2026. The SpaceXAI model page lists it at $2.00 per 1M input tokens and $6.00 per 1M output tokens.

It can read 500,000 tokens at once. Regular users can start on a free plan or pay for SuperGrok plans.

The two products differ in how much text they read at once.

Grok 4.7 reads 500,000 tokens at once, about 3.8 times the 131,072 of GPT-OSS 120B on GroqCloud.

The amount of text a model can read at once is called its context window. 500,000 divided by 131,072 is about 3.8.

Which came first

Groq came first as a company. Groq started in 2016, and xAI started in 2023, so Groq is seven years older.

Grok came first as a product. Grok reached users in November 2023, and GroqCloud opened to developers three months later. So the answer depends on which "first" you mean.

Both companies' key dates sit on one line below.

Groq was founded in 2016; Grok launched in late November 2023, three months before GroqCloud.

Why people mix up the two names

Groq and Grok sound alike, so people mix them up in search and in speech. Grokipedia is an online encyclopedia run by SpaceXAI.

Its entry on the mix-up says Groq is "commonly pronounced 'grock'" and that the two names "sound identical when spoken." Both names come from the same Heinlein word.

The real lawsuit history, and what it is not

There was no lawsuit where Groq sued Grok. Searching "Groq vs Grok lawsuit" finds three separate disputes instead.

The Groq cease and desist letter, November 2023

A cease and desist letter is a formal request to stop doing something. Groq sent one to xAI on November 30, 2023, nine days after Grok was announced.

Techdirt reported that Groq's chief executive at the time, Jonathan Ross, wrote: "Plus, we own the trademark." He also suggested renaming the chatbot Slartibartfast. No lawsuit followed.

The xAI trademark application put on hold, 2024 onward

The USPTO is the US office that approves trademarks. In August 2024, it put the xAI application for the Grok name on hold.

Trademarkia reports that this happened because a similar application had been filed earlier. Trademarkia names Ron Shah, founder of the startup Bizly, who says he registered Grok in 2021 for an events platform.

The application was still on hold in that April 4, 2025 report.

Grokipedia gives a different reason. It says the hold came from likely confusion with the GROQ trademark.

The two sources disagree. Grokipedia is run by SpaceXAI, which is one side of the name fight. Neither account could be checked against the USPTO's own records.

The Groq Health case, 2023 to 2025

Groq Inc. also had a court fight with Groq Health Inc., a health technology company in Manhattan with the same name.

Bloomberg Law reported on March 28, 2025, that Judge Mary K. Vyskocil ruled the court cannot order the USPTO to cancel a pending application.

She dismissed the claims Groq Health made against Groq Inc. xAI was never part of this case.

So the three disputes were one letter, one trademark hold, and one unrelated case.

Each of the three disputes ended in a different way.

None of the three disputes is a Groq lawsuit against Grok.

No ownership link between Groq and Grok

Groq and Grok have no shared owner. Groq Inc. is an independent company. Grok belongs to SpaceX, which bought xAI. The Nvidia deal with Groq has nothing to do with SpaceXAI.

The only link between the two is the sound of the name.

The two names sit in separate company structures.

Groq is independent; Grok belongs to SpaceX through its February 2, 2026 acquisition of xAI.

What Groq and Grok charge, and for what

Grok 4.7 costs 10 times more per output token than GPT-OSS 120B on Groq. The GroqCloud model page lists GPT-OSS 120B at $0.15 per 1M input tokens and $0.60 per 1M output tokens.

It lists GPT-OSS 20B at $0.075 and $0.30. Grok 4.7 costs $2.00 input and $6.00 output.

Price per 1M tokens shows the gap side by side.

Grok 4.7 output costs $6.00 per 1M tokens, 10 times the $0.60 for GPT-OSS 120B on GroqCloud.

Here is the math. $2.00 divided by $0.15 is about 13.3, so Grok 4.7 input costs 13.3 times more. $6.00 divided by $0.60 is 10, so output costs 10 times more.

The two companies sell different things. Groq charges to run a model someone else built. SpaceXAI charges to run its own model.

If you want Grok itself, Groq cannot give it to you, because GroqCloud does not offer Grok.

What we did not measure

This article did not run a latency test, a throughput test, or an output quality test against any model discussed. It uses public company statements, company pages and news reports. It does not cover uptime or how many requests each service allows.

Which one you actually want

• You want to run open models fast and cheap: pick Groq. GPT-OSS 120B costs $0.60 per 1M output tokens. An open model is one whose files anyone can download.

• You want a chat assistant or features tied to X: pick Grok. Grok 4.7 costs $6.00 per 1M output tokens.

• You want to run either one on your own computers: neither works. Groq chips run only in Groq's own cloud, and SpaceXAI offers Grok 4.7 only through its API and apps. An API is how your app sends text to a company and gets an answer back.

• You want the lowest price at large volume: pick GPT-OSS 20B on GroqCloud. It costs $0.30 per 1M output tokens, one twentieth of the Grok 4.7 output price.

• You want to know which writes better answers: there is not enough data. Groq's answers depend on which model you pick, so the two cannot be ranked on quality.

Is Groq owned by Elon Musk

No. Jonathan Ross and Douglas Wightman started Groq Inc. in 2016, and no report shows Elon Musk owning any part of it. Musk controls SpaceX, which owns xAI and Grok.

Is Grok the best AI model

There is no single checked answer. "Best" depends on the test, the task and the date, and this article does not collect test scores. A fair claim needs a named test, a score and a date.

Why did Elon Musk name it Grok

xAI named the chatbot after "grok," Heinlein's word for understanding something deeply. The word had been used in everyday English and in software for decades before xAI existed.

The names will keep getting mixed up

Most people who search "Groq vs Grok" want to know if the two are the same. They are not.

The mix up will keep happening: the Grok trademark question was still open in the last public report, and Groq's move into a bigger cloud business puts it in more news next to SpaceXAI.

Check each company's own price and news pages before you buy, because both changed several times in 2026.