Marvell Technology granted Google warrants to buy up to $12.2 billion of its stock as part of an expanded custom AI-chip deal, according to a regulatory filing reported by Bloomberg on August 19. Marvell shares jumped nearly 8% on the news, while Broadcom, Google’s longtime lead custom-chip partner, fell more than 5%.
The terms
The warrant gives Google the right to purchase up to 58.97 million Marvell shares at $206.58 each, worth $12.18 billion if fully exercised, according to Yahoo Finance’s reporting on the filing. Exercising the full warrant would make Google Marvell’s fifth-largest investor. The deal could generate roughly $120 billion in revenue for Marvell through fiscal 2033, contingent on Google hitting the purchase targets the warrant is tied to.
The agreement covers a broad range of technologies used alongside Google’s TPUs, including processors that run AI models, manage data storage, and move data across networks, not a single chip line.
How the market read it
Morningstar analyst William Kerwin called it “a big win for Marvell,” but cautioned against reading too much into Broadcom’s stock drop. He described the deal as “a growing pie at Google for new sources, rather than a competitive displacement of Broadcom.”
Why it matters
Structuring the deal as a stock warrant instead of a straight purchase order ties Google’s upside directly to how much silicon it actually buys from Marvell, which likely explains why investors read this as a stronger signal of intent than a typical supply agreement would send. It’s the kind of commitment a company makes when it expects the relationship to compound over years, not a one-off contract.
Whether this meaningfully dents Broadcom’s position is less certain than the day’s stock move suggests. Kerwin’s framing, that this expands Google’s total chip spending rather than reallocating an existing budget away from Broadcom, is the more measured read, and it lines up with how aggressively every major cloud provider has been diversifying its silicon suppliers this year, from Nvidia’s own shifting China supply chain to Google’s own recent spending on AI training infrastructure.
What to watch: how many warrant shares actually vest over the next year as an early signal of real purchase volume, and whether Broadcom discloses any change in its own Google-related revenue guidance in its next earnings report.
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