Marvell Gains Ground in AI Chip Race as Google Weighs Broadcom Alternative
Marvell Technology shares climbed Monday following a report that the semiconductor firm is in discussions with Alphabet’s Google to develop next-generation artificial intelligence chips — a development that introduces competitive pressure on Broadcom, Google’s longstanding processor partner.
According to a report by technology publication The Information, citing people familiar with the matter, Google is exploring a partnership with Marvell to produce new iterations of its AI chip architecture. Neither company had commented publicly by early Monday trading. Marvell shares advanced approximately 4% in early session activity, while Broadcom retreated roughly 1.7%.
Broadcom currently holds the lead position in developing Google’s Tensor Processing Units — the search giant’s proprietary AI accelerators. That arrangement is not considered immediately threatened; the two companies recently formalized an agreement extending their collaboration through 2031. Nevertheless, a parallel engagement with Marvell could meaningfully shift Google’s negotiating leverage on pricing and contract terms with Broadcom.
Both Marvell and Broadcom operate in the application-specific integrated circuit market — processors engineered for targeted, high-volume computational tasks rather than the broad general-purpose workloads handled by graphics processing units from Nvidia. The specificity of ASICs makes them particularly well-suited to inference workloads, the computationally intensive process by which AI models generate outputs from trained data. Google is reportedly evaluating Marvell precisely for that use case.
“There appears to be a diversification of engagements bringing additional ASIC suppliers into hyperscale roadmaps,” wrote a Susquehanna analyst in a Monday research note, pointing to Marvell as an emerging beneficiary of that trend.
Marvell shares have nearly tripled over the past twelve months. While much of that momentum has been attributed to strength in its networking segment, analyst conviction has also grown around the company’s long-term custom chip design engagements with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft.