Second major acquisition of an Israeli hi-tech company in last year; Mellanox CEO: This combination will foster the creation of powerful technology and fantastic opportunities for our people.
NVIDIA Corporation will acquire Israel’s Mellanox Technologies Ltd. for a reported $5.9 billion.
Both Mellanox, a leading company in microchips and InfiniBand and Ethernet interconnect solutions, and NVIDIA, the major gaming and interactive graphics firm, announced the acquisition on Monday. In a press release, NVIDIA referred to the major deal as a means to “unite two of the world’s leading companies in high-performance computing,” and that “Together, NVIDIA’s computing platform and Mellanox’s interconnects power over 250 of the world’s top 500 supercomputers and have as customers every major cloud service provider and computer maker.”
Both Intel Corp and Microsoft were reportedly in negotiations to acquire Mellanox over the past few months. NVIDIA will acquire the company at $125 per share, the deal expected to be completed by the end of this year.
Jensen Huang, the founder and CEO of NVIDIA, confirmed the acquisition, stating on Monday “We’re excited to unite NVIDIA’s accelerated computing platform with Mellanox’s world-renowned accelerated networking platform under one roof to create next-generation datacenter-scale computing solutions. I am particularly thrilled to work closely with the visionary leaders of Mellanox and their amazing people to invent the computers of tomorrow.”
CEO and founder of Mellanox, Eyal Waldman, referred to the major deal as “The combination of our two companies comes as a natural extension of our long-standing partnership and is a great fit given our common performance-driven cultures. This combination will foster the creation of powerful technology and fantastic opportunities for our people.”
Mellanox and NVIDIA have collaborated on several projects over the past decade. The most significant projects have been the creation of the Sierra and Summit- the world’s fastest supercomputers.
This is the second major acquisition of an Israeli hi-tech company in the past year. Last March, Intel Corp purchased Israel’s Mobileye, the autonomous vehicle technology company, in the largest acquisition of an Israeli high-tech company to date. The deal was worth over $15 billion and Intel moved its automotive driving division to Israel. Mobileye and Intel have been working together since 2016 and Intel currently employs over 10,000 in its Israel branches.
In November of last year, Daimler AG opened a Mercedes-Benz tech hub in Tel Aviv, the second massive deal made in the auto-technology industry in Israel. The tech hub centers on research and development, specifically in the digital and mobility services, including biometrics, security and navigation.
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