Nvidia reportedly spent more than $900 million (about 1.25 trillion won) to bring on Enfabrica's chief executive officer (CEO) and employees and to secure the company's technology.
On the 18th (local time), CNBC, citing multiple sources, reported that Nvidia finalized the transaction last week by paying in cash and stock, and that Enfabrica CEO Rochan Sankar has joined Nvidia.
Enfabrica is a developer of networking semiconductors for data centers. Founded in 2019, the startup said its technology can consolidation more than 100,000 graphics processing units (GPUs). Nvidia sells products in the form of large-scale clusters centered on its AI chips, and Enfabrica has a solution that helps such clusters operate virtually like a single computer.
According to CNBC, last year Enfabrica also raised an additional $115 million from Spark Capital, ARM, Samsung Electronics, and Cisco. After the fundraising, the company's valuation was estimated at about $600 million.
CNBC said the deal is similar to the recent AI talent hiring-and-acquisition approach pursued by Facebook parent Meta Platforms and Google parent Alphabet. Before launching "Meta Superintelligence Lab," which aims to develop AI that surpasses humans, Meta invested $14.3 billion in the AI startup Scale AI to secure a 49% equity stake in the company and recruited founder and CEO Alexander Wang along with other employees.