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Nvidia’s $6.9 billion acquisition of Israel-based Mellanox was announced over a year ago on March 11, 2019. The deal has now passed its last hurdle and has been approved by China’s competition and mergers watchdog on Thursday, April 16.
US and European regulators had signed off the buyout in December, and some people speculated the deal was being held hostage by the Chinese because of Trump’s trade war.
Mellanox makes the fastest processor and server interconnect systems and Nvidia as you know makes the fastest GPUs, so it’s a logical merger of technologies and gives Nvidia an advantage over its competitors. Watch AMD and Intel scramble to match in PR if not actual bits/second.
The stock market, already on the rise, liked the news and has elevated Nvidia’s share price almost 10% until adjustments took hold, driven by computer trading.
When Nvidia’s CEO was asked if he was planning a layoff, his answer was short and quick—“NO — precisely the opposite. We are accelerating your raise to put some extra money in your hands,” he said in an internal memo.
Nvidia does not plan to lay off employees amid the coronavirus pandemic and will, in fact, accelerate raises in recognition of the chipmaker's “vital work.”
Nvidia’s revenue for the twelve months ending January 31, 2020, was $10.918B. With the addition of Mellanox, this takes Nvidia’s top line to $12.3 billion or more.
Prior to the acquisition, Nvidia had 13,775 employees, Mellanox will add more 2,800 more people to the time clock.
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