Analysis
Marvell Technology has granted Google the right to buy as much as $12.2 billion of its shares as part of an expanded custom-chip agreement, The Information and Bloomberg reported Wednesday. Under the terms, Google can buy nearly 59 million Marvell shares at $206.58 each; roughly 1.4 million of those warrant shares vest in the deal's first year, with the rest vesting over time in tranches tied to every $500 million in chips Google actually buys from Marvell.
The underlying commercial agreement covers a broad set of silicon built to work with Google's tensor processing unit ecosystem: AI inference accelerators, storage controllers, network interface controllers, memory interface controllers and near-memory compute. If Google hits every purchasing target embedded in the agreement, the tie-up could bring Marvell roughly $120 billion in custom-chip sales through fiscal 2033 -- and a stake of that size would make Google Marvell's fifth-largest shareholder.
Reading the stock reaction
Marvell shares jumped as much as 14% on the news, while Broadcom -- which has been Google's primary external partner for building its TPU application-specific chips -- fell as much as 5.8%. Pulse previously covered Broadcom's dominance of that custom-chip relationship. The market's read is straightforward: Google is diversifying its custom-silicon supply chain rather than deepening its sole reliance on Broadcom, and tying that diversification to warrants rather than cash gives Google upside exposure to Marvell's stock while Marvell gets a large, multi-year committed customer locked in through equity incentive rather than contract terms alone.
Structuring the deal as warrants rather than a straight supply contract is notable in its own right. It aligns Marvell's incentive to execute well -- the shares are worth more to Google if Marvell's stock performs -- while giving Google a claim on Marvell's upside without writing a check today. That mirrors the equity-for-commitment structures Nvidia and OpenAI have used in several of 2026's largest AI infrastructure deals, where compute buyers increasingly want equity upside attached to multi-year purchase commitments rather than pure vendor relationships.
For Marvell, the deal is a validation that its custom-ASIC business can compete directly with Broadcom for hyperscaler TPU work, a segment Broadcom has dominated. Whether Marvell can actually deliver chips at the volume and cadence the agreement implies is the open execution question -- $120 billion in potential sales over seven years is a target contingent on Google hitting every purchasing milestone, not a guaranteed revenue stream, and custom-chip production timelines have slipped industrywide as demand has outpaced foundry capacity.
