Marvell scales up networking to extend Nvidia AI ecosystem | Computer Weekly

In a major collaboration that will see the two AI companies link to the GPU manufacturer’s AI factory and AI-radio access network (RAN) ecosystem, as well as investigate research into silicon photonics technology, Marvell Technology has joined the Nvidia AI ecosystem through the NVLink Fusion platform.

The primary objective of the strategic partnership is to connect Marvell to the Nvidia universe, offering customers building on Nvidia architectures greater choice and flexibility in developing next-generation infrastructure. As part of the development, Nvidia has invested $2bn in Marvell.

Operating for more than 30 years, Marvel’s stated mission is to move, store, process and secure data with semiconductor solutions. The company believes that through a process of “deep collaboration and transparency” it is ultimately changing the way tomorrow’s enterprise, cloud and carrier architectures transform for the better.

It recognised that as more of the world’s data flows through the cloud, each cloud is unique and uses its portfolio of data infrastructure semiconductor technology to optimise the best solution for customers’ needs. Working on-premise or in the cloud, it works with customers to look for “unexpected connections” that deliver a competitive edge.

The partnership builds on Nvidia NVLink Fusion, a rack-scale platform that enables customers to develop semi-custom AI infrastructure using the NVLink ecosystem. Under the terms of the partnership, Marvell will provide custom XPUs and NVLink Fusion-compatible scale-up networking, while Nvidia will provide the supporting technologies, including Vera CPU, ConnectX NICs, BlueField DPUs, NVLink interconnect and Spectrum-X switches, as well as rack-scale AI compute.

For customers developing custom XPUs, NVLink Fusion is designed to enable a heterogeneous AI infrastructure fully compatible with Nvidia systems, allowing “seamless” integration with Nvidia GPU, LPU, networking and storage platforms while using Nvidia’s technology stack global supply chain ecosystem.

The companies will also partner to transform the world’s telecommunication network into AI infrastructure with Nvidia Aerial AI-RAN for 5G/6G, and advance networking for AI. This will include advanced optical interconnect solutions and silicon photonics technology.

“Our expanded partnership with Nvidia reflects the growing importance of high-speed connectivity, optical interconnect and accelerated infrastructure in scaling AI,” said Matt Murphy, chairman and CEO of Marvell. “By connecting Marvell’s leadership in high-performance analogue, optical DSP, silicon photonics and custom silicon to Nvidia’s expanding AI ecosystem through NVLink Fusion, we are enabling customers to build scalable, efficient AI infrastructure.”

Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, added: “The inference inflection has arrived. Token generation demand is surging, and the world is racing to build AI factories. Together with Marvell, we are enabling customers to leverage Nvidia’s AI infrastructure ecosystem and scale to build specialised AI compute.”

The new strategic partnership follows a similar arrangement that Nvidia struck with Nokia in October 2025. In this, the companies have announced a partnership to add the former’s AI-powered RAN products to Nokia’s RAN portfolio, enabling communication service providers to launch AI-native 5G Advanced and 6G networks on Nvidia platforms.

The aim was to drive wireless innovation in performance and efficiency, ensuring consumers using generative, agentic and physical AI applications on their devices will have “seamless” network experiences. The companies said that by working together, they were laying the strategic infrastructure and opening up a high-growth frontier for telecom providers by delivering distributed edge AI inferencing at scale.