Marvell’s share of the AI build-out just got a big new backer: Google. Under an expanded custom-chip pact announced August 19, the search giant received a warrant to buy up to 58.97 million Marvell shares at $206.58 apiece, a position worth roughly $12.2B in full.
The warrant is not a gift. It vests in tranches as Google buys chips, with each $500M of orders unlocking another slice of the stake. Reuters calculates that meeting the purchase targets through Marvell’s fiscal 2033 could translate into about $120B of custom-chip revenue for the company.
The silicon involved sits on the edges of Google’s tensor processing unit ecosystem rather than in the TPUs themselves. Marvell will supply inference accelerators plus the controllers that handle storage and networking across TPU systems, positioning the company as a second custom-chip supplier alongside Broadcom.
Wall Street cheered the arrangement. Marvell shares climbed as much as 14 percent before settling around 8 percent higher, while Broadcom slid more than 5 percent. Analyst William Kerwin of Morningstar called the outcome a strong one for Marvell, adding that Google appears to be enlarging its supplier pool rather than replacing Broadcom.
Stake-for-supply deals are becoming a pattern in the AI chip market. AMD handed OpenAI a similar option on up to 10 percent of its shares in October, as hyperscalers buy into the companies that build their custom silicon.
