Nvidia invests $2bn in chipmaker Marvell to boost AI networking
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Nvidia is investing $2bn in Silicon Valley chipmaker Marvell to boost the networking technology that connects its AI chips into ever-larger data centres.
The two semiconductor groups will work together on silicon photonics as part of an effort to upgrade data centre networking systems with optical technology to speed up data flows, they said on Tuesday.
Nvidia’s deal with Marvell could also make it easier for Big Tech companies’ own custom AI chips to be put into Nvidia’s data centre systems.
Marvell helps US hyperscalers including Amazon to design their own specialised AI accelerator chips, providing an alternative to Nvidia’s general-purpose graphics processing units.
The two companies said their tie-up would enable “seamless integration” between these kinds of custom AI chips and Nvidia’s GPUs, networking and storage systems.
Nvidia is trying to leverage its leading position in AI processors to become a broader platform for AI data centres. That would help entrench itself in the facilities that power Big Tech’s multibillion-dollar race to dominate AI.
Earlier this month Nvidia launched a new dedicated chip for AI inference — when an AI model responds to users’ queries and generates output such as text and computer code — marking the first time it had broadened its core AI chip products beyond GPUs.
Shares in Marvell jumped about 8 per cent in late morning trade in New York on Tuesday and have gained more than 50 per cent over the past 12 months, leaving it worth close to $83bn.
Chief executive Matt Murphy said the alliance would help customers with scalability and efficiency: “Our expanded partnership with Nvidia reflects the growing importance of high-speed connectivity, optical interconnect and accelerated infrastructure in scaling AI.”
Both Nvidia and Marvell have been making acquisitions to consolidate their positions in the AI data centre market.
Last month, Marvell completed its $3.3bn acquisition of Celestial AI, which developed photonics technology that can join hundreds of thousands of AI accelerator chips together.
Bringing AI chips together in vast clusters has become vital to building and deploying cutting-edge AI systems such as those that power Google’s Gemini, Anthropic’s Claude Code and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Nvidia has been gradually expanding its capabilities beyond GPUs since its $6.9bn acquisition of networking provider Mellanox in 2019.
In December, it struck a roughly $20bn deal with AI chip start-up Groq, hiring its top talent and licensing its technology, which helped launch its new inference chip in March.
