Marvell agrees to acquire Lumentum in $115 billion stock deal
The proposed acquisition would add lasers, optical transceivers, optical switches and specialized semiconductor manufacturing to Marvell’s portfolio.
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The proposed acquisition would add lasers, optical transceivers, optical switches and specialized semiconductor manufacturing to Marvell’s portfolio.
Marvell has agreed to acquire Lumentum in an all-stock deal with an implied enterprise value of $115 billion. The agreement would bring together Marvell’s custom chips, networking and connection technologies with Lumentum’s optical products.
The deal follows Marvell’s February 2026 purchase of photonic interconnect developer Celestial AI for about $3.5 billion. Eight months before the Lumentum deal was reported, Nvidia invested $2 billion in Lumentum to bolster its optics manufacturing capacity.
The Register says Lumentum would fill gaps in Marvell’s portfolio with high-performance lasers, optical transceivers, optical circuit switches and manufacturing using the semiconductor material indium phosphide. Transceivers send and receive optical signals, while optical switches direct those signals between connections.
The Register says faster connections and larger computing systems are driving the move toward optical networking, which carries data using light. Nvidia and AMD are considering larger systems that would use optical links to connect hundreds or thousands of graphics processing units, or GPUs, for training and running superintelligence (SI) systems.
Conventional copper wire can carry a 400 Gbps signal for only about 1.25 meters, and its reach halves each time the speed per lane doubles. As speeds exceed 400 Gbps per lane, copper is pushed to its limits, requiring denser, hotter rack systems. Optical links can carry that signal over kilometers, allowing systems to span aisles while reducing the power and cooling needed by individual racks.
Power has also been a constraint for optics. Nvidia’s Jensen Huang said the company avoided optics in its first Blackwell-based rack systems in 2024 because they would have added 20 kW to a system already consuming 120 kW under load. The Register says Celestial AI’s technology enabled optical connections placed near or within a chip package that use a fraction of the power of conventional pluggable optics.
The intended withdrawal would take effect on 1 January 2027, following a US eligibility review, removing the countries’ access to AGOA trade preferences.
The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2028, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals. If completed, The Register says, it would position Marvell as a one-stop supplier of optical technology for SI infrastructure providers.
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