Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) spent more than $900M to hire Enfabrica CEO Rochan Sankar and other employees and to license the AI hardware startup’s technology, CNBC reported.
Nvidia is paying cash and stock in the deal, and the transaction closed last week. Enfabrica’s CEO Sankar has joined Nvidia, the report added, citing people with knowledge of the matter.
An Nvidia spokesperson declined to comment in an email to Seeking Alpha. Enfabrica did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Seeking Alpha.
Enfabrica, which was founded in 2019, says its technology can connect over 100,000 graphics processing units, or GPUs, together. It’s a solution which could help Nvidia offer integrated systems around its chips so clusters can effectively serve as a single computer, the report added.
Nvidia previously invested in Enfabrica as part of a $125M Series B round in 2023 which was led by Atreides Management. The company did not reveal its valuation at the time, but said that it was a fivefold increase from its Series A funding, the report noted.
Late last year, Enfabrica raised another $115M from investors including Spark Capital, Arm, Samsung and Cisco. As per PitchBook, the post-money valuation was around $600 million, the report added.
The deal reminds of similar talent and technology acquisitions by companies such as Meta Platforms (META) and Alphabet’s (GOOG) (GOOGL) Google.
In June, Meta announced a $14.3B investment in AI firm Scale, acquiring a 49% stake and valuing the San Francisco-based company at over $29B. Scale CEO Alexandr Wang joining Meta to head its “superintelligence” team focused on artificial general intelligence. In July, Google announced an agreement to bring in Varun Mohan, co-founder and CEO of Windsurf, and other research and development employees in a $2.4B deal that also included licensing fees.
Last year, Google made a similar deal to bring in the founders of Character.AI. Microsoft (META) did a similar deal for Inflection, as did Amazon for Adept.
On Thursday, Nvidia and Intel (INTC) announced a blockbuster deal to co-develop PC and data center chips. Simultaneously, Nvidia said it would take a $5B stake in Intel.