Groq and Equinix Partner for Low-Latency AI Infrastructure in Europe

Enterprises in Europe face unique challenges when executing their AI strategies. Like their counterparts in other regions, they’re increasingly operating across complex hybrid multicloud environments and supporting distributed data sources and workloads. But on top of that, they must also meet stringent compliance, security, resilience and of course sustainability requirements.

To address these challenges and provide low latency for inference workloads, companies pursuing AI in Europe need access to AI infrastructure in Europe. This helps to ensure proximity to data sources while also empowering them to apply the appropriate privacy and governance controls.

The demand for AI-ready infrastructure in Europe inspired Groq—a pioneering provider of high-performance AI inference capabilities—to launch a new European data center footprint inside an Equinix IBX® colocation data center in Helsinki. This expansion brings together the best of Groq’s fast, cost-efficient AI technology with Equinix’s flexible, vendor-neutral digital infrastructure. Our joint customers can now accelerate their enterprise AI strategies without putting themselves or their data at risk.

Demonstrating AI agility

While some enterprise AI deployments can be incredibly complex and slow-moving, Groq has clearly demonstrated that it is possible for AI infrastructure implementations to be quick and agile.

Groq can stand up infrastructure quickly due to a resilient supply chain and clearly defined data center requirements. Paired with Equinix—who has the space, power and advanced capabilities to meet those requirements—Groq was able to streamline the deployment. In fact, the AI environment was up and running in only about a month.

European businesses understand that they need to move quickly to start capitalizing on AI opportunities before their competitors do. Now, thanks to the partnership between Equinix and Groq, they can take advantage of low-latency inference today—not months from now. Our joint customers don’t have to wait to get the hardware and infrastructure they need to start executing their AI strategies.

What makes Helsinki an ideal AI hub?

To better serve customers in Europe, Groq wanted a data center environment with high capacity and robust connectivity. Thanks to Equinix’s strong presence in Europe, there was no shortage of markets to choose from. But in the end, Helsinki provided the ideal mix of benefits to support Groq’s European expansion.

Like other Nordic markets, Helsinki has a naturally cooler climate. The combination of Groq’s low power and cooling needs and the availability of free cooling in Helsinki allows Groq and Equinix to offer compute in a more responsible and environmentally conscious way. For companies looking to ramp up their AI strategies without disrupting their sustainability progress, this partnership provides unique capabilities over traditional approaches.

Finland is also a leader in the renewable energy space, thanks to ample real estate that’s well-suited for wind energy projects. In fact, Equinix has signed three power purchase agreements to support new wind energy developments in Finland, for a total of 129 MW of renewable energy under long-term contract. These kinds of projects help contribute new renewable energy to the local grid, thus enabling greater reliability and reducing climate impact.

However, the Nordic countries have much more to offer than just climate and energy. They’re also located near digital hubs like Frankfurt, London, Amsterdam and Paris, and have strong, low-latency connectivity to these central European markets. For instance, the C-Lion1 subsea cable system directly links Finland with Germany.

The Nordic countries are also home to a thriving digital ecosystem. This is no accident: It’s a direct result of more than a decade of work to build the infrastructure, power and connectivity that help digital businesses thrive. Now, organizations that deploy in Helsinki to access AI infrastructure will benefit from this ecosystem. As they scale their AI initiatives, they’ll have their pick of different partners to collaborate with and acquire services from.

Meeting data privacy and sovereignty requirements

Among the unique challenges businesses face when it comes to implementing AI in Europe is the need to meet rigorous and always-evolving regulations around data privacy and sovereignty. For instance, the European Union Artificial Intelligence Act took effect last year, starting a 24-month countdown until full enforcement begins for most regulations. Among other requirements, the Act calls for businesses in Europe to maintain control and visibility over their AI data and models.

To meet these requirements, it’s essential for businesses to work with infrastructure providers that have a dedicated presence in Europe. Keeping their AI workloads on the continent helps ensure that any AI datasets that are subject to data sovereignty requirements can also stay within Europe, thus avoiding any unexpected complications.

Using Groq technology on Equinix infrastructure can also help businesses protect their AI data as it moves between sources and processing locations. With Equinix Fabric®, a Network as a Service solution, customers can create direct, private virtual connections to anywhere their AI strategy might take them. This allows them to keep their AI datasets off the public internet. In turn, avoiding the public internet allows them to bypass data sovereignty and privacy issues, while also ensuring better performance.

Amplifying performance benefits for AI inference workloads

Since 2016, Groq has focused exclusively on providing faster, more resource-efficient inference for text, audio and vision models. The company’s custom language processing units (LPUs) are built with speed in mind, making real-time inference a possibility for more customers in more places.

By taking advantage of Groq technology on Equinix infrastructure, companies can further amplify the built-in performance benefits of that technology. For instance, businesses can take advantage of a metro edge inference strategy, where they access colocated infrastructure in proximity to different data sources within the same metro. This ensures low-latency connectivity to all those data sources while also removing the cost and security concerns that would inevitably arise from hosting inference workloads inside their own facilities.

In fact, the combination of low compute latency from Groq LPUs and low network latency enabled by Equinix infrastructure is redefining what “proximity” means in Europe. There was once a time when the distance between Helsinki and London would have meant unacceptable levels of latency. However, this is no longer the case. Because both the compute hardware and the underlying network infrastructure are primed to keep latency low, one could argue that it’s now possible to treat all of Europe as one big metro area for AI workloads.

In addition, businesses don’t have to choose between localized control and global scalability for their AI workloads. They can take advantage of Groq’s new data center environment in Helsinki to help ensure low-latency inference capabilities and robust data governance within Europe, while also using Equinix’s global data center platform to expand their AI footprint quickly.

To learn more about how recent developments in AI are driving greater demand for low-latency inference at the edge, read the IDC analyst brief Growth in AI Agents Will Require an Edge Inferencing Strategy.[1]

[1] Dave McCarthy, Growth in AI Agents Will Require an Edge Inferencing Strategy, an IDC Analyst Brief sponsored by Equinix, #US53368725, May 2025.