NVIDIA Invests $2 Billion in Marvell, Integrating Custom Chip Competitors into Its Ecosystem

According to monitoring by 1M AI News, NVIDIA has announced a $2 billion investment in semiconductor company Marvell Technology, while also opening its AI server architecture to Marvell through the NVLink Fusion platform, allowing Marvell to integrate custom AI chips and networking devices into NVIDIA’s systems. The two companies will also collaborate on silicon photonics (which uses light instead of copper to transmit data, significantly speeding up processes and reducing energy consumption) and the AI transformation of 5G/6G telecommunications networks. One of Marvell’s core businesses is helping cloud computing giants like Amazon design custom AI acceleration chips, which essentially serve as alternatives to NVIDIA’s GPUs. This move by NVIDIA represents a proactive embrace of the custom chip trend: rather than forcing customers to choose between NVIDIA GPUs and custom chips, it allows custom chips to operate within NVIDIA’s infrastructure ecosystem. Under the collaboration, Marvell will provide custom acceleration chips (XPUs) and an extended network compatible with NVLink Fusion, while NVIDIA will supply Vera CPUs, network cards, DPUs, switches, and cabinet-level AI computing power. Jensen Huang stated, “The inflection point for inference has arrived, with a surge in demand for token generation, and the world is racing to build AI factories.” Marvell’s Chairman and CEO Matt Murphy mentioned in a CNBC interview that he does not see this as a zero-sum game, as both companies are working together to expand the overall market. This marks another multi-billion dollar investment by NVIDIA along the AI supply chain in recent years. Last May, Huang announced the opening of AI server architecture to allow multiple partners (including Marvell) to deploy custom chips, and this investment is a substantial realization of that open strategy. The collaboration on silicon photonics is also noteworthy, as Marvell acquired silicon photonics startup Celestial AI last December. Following the announcement, Marvell’s stock surged 13% to $99.05, marking its largest single-day gain in over three weeks; NVIDIA rose 5.6% to $174.40.