Marvell buys Lumentum for $115 billion in all-stock AI chip deal, one of tech's biggest ever

Marvell Technology is buying Lumentum for $115 billion including debt, about Rs 31.8 trillion at Monday's interbank rate, in an all-stock deal announced on Monday, 2 November 2026. It is one of the largest technology takeovers ever, well above Microsoft's $68.7 billion purchase of Activision Blizzard, TechCrunch noted.

The deal in numbers

The terms are as reported by Reuters via Business Recorder. Reports differ on the equity value: Reuters put it at $102.54 billion, while TechCrunch, citing the Wall Street Journal, gave about $80 billion.

What the two companies make

Marvell designs custom chips and networking silicon used by cloud companies. Lumentum makes lasers and optical components that move data at high speed inside and between data centres, the parts that link thousands of AI chips together. Marvell says the combination will make it a "leader in AI connectivity" and puts the combined market it can sell into at $550 billion.

Marvell chief executive Matt Murphy will run the combined company and called AI infrastructure "an opportunity that comes along once in a generation", Reuters reported. Both boards approved the deal unanimously; it still needs shareholder and regulatory approval.

Nvidia had already put $2 billion into each company earlier this year, according to TechCrunch.

Why investors are nervous

Lumentum fell 6.5% and Marvell 2.3% before the US market opened on Monday, and both had already fallen since talks were first reported in late October, amid worries that AI spending is running ahead of returns. An IG Group analyst told Reuters investors were right to ask whether Marvell is paying too much.

Why it matters in Pakistan

Pakistan's IT exports and freelancers depend on cloud capacity that runs on exactly this kind of hardware. A bigger, combined supplier of AI networking gear shapes what cloud and AI services cost worldwide over the next few years. If you earn in dollars from this work, our freelancer tax calculator shows what you owe, and the currency converter turns dollar figures into rupees at today's rate.