Marvell Technology partners with Google to develop custom silicon products

Marvell Technology just landed the kind of deal that makes semiconductor CEOs sleep soundly. The chipmaker announced an expanded partnership with Google on July 29 to co-develop custom silicon products for Google’s Tensor Processing Unit ecosystem, a collaboration that spans AI inference accelerators, storage controllers, network interface controllers, memory controllers, and near-memory computing capabilities. The deal’s financial architecture The numbers here tell a story of serious long-term commitment. As part of the agreement, Marvell issued a warrant allowing Google to purchase up to 58.97 million shares at $206.58 each. If fully exercised, that warrant would be worth roughly $12.2B and would make Google an approximately 7% shareholder in Marvell. But Google doesn’t get those shares for free. The warrant’s vesting is tied to Google’s purchasing activities through fiscal 2033, with a cumulative revenue target of $120B attached to the arrangement. In other words, Google has to keep buying Marvell’s chips at scale to unlock the equity upside. Investors clearly liked what they saw. Marvell shares rose by nearly 10% following the announcement, while Broadcom, a key rival in the cu...