Marvell granted Google a warrant on 19 August to buy up to 58.97 million shares at $206.58 each, worth about $12.18 billion if exercised in full, alongside an agreement for Marvell to develop custom silicon for it. Marvell shares rose more than 10%. Broadcom, the incumbent in Google’s custom chip work, fell about 3%.
The scope is wide. Marvell will develop AI inference accelerators, storage, networking, memory interface controllers and near-memory computing technologies, all designed to work with the TPU ecosystem that underpins most of Google’s AI infrastructure. If Google meets the agreed targets, the arrangement could carry roughly $120 billion of revenue through fiscal 2033, and a fully exercised warrant would make Google the chipmaker’s fifth-largest shareholder.
The structure is the actual news. Most of the warrant only becomes available as Google hits purchasing targets, so its stake grows in proportion to how much it buys. That binds the two companies tightly, and it also means Marvell’s equity story and its order book from a single customer are now the same story told twice.
Which is where the risk sits. A supplier whose share price is underwritten by one buyer’s commitments is exposed twice to the same decision, and Google keeps the option not to exercise. The $120 billion is a ceiling contingent on targets running seven years out rather than anything booked, and Broadcom has been displaced from a relationship without having yet lost the revenue. The number to watch is not the warrant’s headline value but how much of it vests in the first two years.
