Recent M&A Rationale and Commonality

Qualcomm buying Ventana, Meta acquiring Rivos, Intel acquiring SambaNova, and Marvell buying Celestial AI signal a decisive shift in the semiconductor industry. These moves are not about expanding short-term revenues; they represent a restructuring of AI infrastructure to address “silicon sovereignty” from Nvidia’s GPU, CUDA, and NVLink ecosystem.

The common thread across all four deals is the race toward the “Post-GPU” era, aiming to solve three critical bottlenecks: compute efficiency (via NPUs and RISC-V CPUs), data movement (via photonic interconnects), and supply chain independence (reducing reliance on Nvidia and Arm).

Commonalities:

Data Center Infrastructure for Generative AI Workloads:
Each acquisition is driven by the need to support LLMs and AIGC workloads at scale. Qualcomm, Meta, and Intel are acquiring advanced silicon—RISC-V CPUs, AI accelerators, and inference-optimized architectures—while Marvell addresses the data movement bottleneck through photonic interconnects. Collectively, these moves represent an industry-wide push toward custom, high-efficiency AI inference infrastructure optimized for data center.
RISC-V Strategies:
Qualcomm and Meta are both doubling down on RISC-V to gain architectural independence and optimize performance per watt. These acquisitions signal a shift toward vertical integration, enabling companies to tailor entire chips (CPU, accelerator, memory, I/O) to their own workloads while avoiding x86 and Arm licensing constraints.
Modular Architectures and Advanced Packaging:
All four acquisitions reflect increasing emphasis on chiplets, co-packaged optics, and heterogeneous integration. Ventana’s scalable RISC-V chiplets, Rivos’s CPU-NPU SoC designs, and Celestial AI’s photonic interconnects all aim to achieve scalable computing systems.

Individual Deal Rationales:

1. Qualcomm Acquires Ventana

Status: Announced December 2025
Deal Logic: Strategic Hedging & High-Performance RISC-V

Dual-ISA Strategy: While Qualcomm succeeded with its Arm-based Oryon cores (Snapdragon X Elite), acquiring Ventana enables a “Dual-ISA” roadmap—Arm for consumer devices, RISC-V for datacenter, automotive, and industrial IoT.
Leverage Against Arm: Given Qualcomm’s legal disputes with Arm, Ventana offers a credible alternative to Arm’s Neoverse IP, reducing long-term licensing risks.

2. Meta Acquires Rivos

Status: Rumored / Reported October 2025
Deal Logic: Vertical Integration & Escaping the “Nvidia Tax”

Avoiding the Nvidia Tax: Meta spends billions annually on Nvidia H100/Blackwell GPUs. Acquiring Rivos accelerates Meta’s internal MTIA roadmap, reducing dependency on external silicon.
Full-Stack Optimization: Rivos brings a clean-sheet RISC-V architecture tailored for Meta’s recommendation engines (DLRM) and LLaMA clusters—eliminating general-purpose overhead inherent in commercial GPUs.

3. Intel Acquires SambaNova

Status: Term Sheet Signed / Advanced Talks as of December 2025
Deal Logic: Inference Scaling & Software Consolidation

Inference-Focused Differentiation: While Gaudi (from Habana Labs) targets training, SambaNova’s Reconfigurable Dataflow Unit (RDU) excels at inference—an area Intel aims to dominate as LLM deployment scales.
Buying the Software Moat: SambaNova’s SambaFlow compiler stack is a critical software asset, providing Intel with a CUDA-like software advantage and bolstering its OneAPI strategy.

4. Marvell Acquires Celestial AI

Status: Announced December 2025
Deal Logic: Solving Optical Scale-Up & the Memory Wall

Breaking the Bandwidth Barrier: AI compute is increasingly bottlenecked by interconnect bandwidth. Celestial AI’s photonic fabric replaces copper with optical fiber, delivering higher throughput at lower power.
CXL & Memory Pooling: Celestial enables memory pooling across hundreds of accelerators. Combined with Marvell’s strength in DSP and interconnects, this positions Marvell as the essential “plumber” of the AI datacenter.

Qualcomm Acquires Ventana Micro Systems (RISC-V Datacenter CPUs)

Status: Confirmed. Qualcomm announced on December 10, 2025 that it acquired Ventana Micro Systems, a startup known for high-performance RISC-V CPU designstheregister.com. The terms were not publicly disclosed. Qualcomm plans to continue Ventana’s product development in parallel with its in-house Oryon (Arm-based) CPU cores used in Snapdragon chipstheregister.com.
Strategic Rationale: Qualcomm’s goal is to deepen its RISC-V CPU expertise and diversify beyond Arm-based designs. Ventana’s team brings deep knowledge of the open-standard RISC-V ISA and high-performance core design, which will complement Qualcomm’s custom Oryon CPU roadmapphoronix.com. Qualcomm’s VP of technology said the RISC-V architecture can “advance the frontier” of CPU innovation, and acquiring Ventana is a “pivotal step” toward delivering industry-leading RISC-V processors across its product linestheregister.com. In essence, this move secures an alternative CPU technology that Qualcomm can leverage for future products without relying solely on Arm’s IP (a strategic hedge given Qualcomm’s past licensing disputes with Arm).
Business Opportunities: Ventana targets datacenter and enterprise CPUs, an area Qualcomm has been eager to re-entertheregister.com. By integrating Ventana’s designs (e.g. the Veyron V2 32-core RISC-V chiplets with vector and matrix acceleratorstheregister.com), Qualcomm can develop server-class RISC-V chips for cloud and edge datacenters, telecom infrastructure, and AI-intensive workloads. The chiplet-based architecture also aligns with industry trends for scaling CPU performance modularly. Ventana’s CPUs include 512-bit vector units and custom matrix math accelerators (0.5 INT8 TOPS per core per GHz), which position Qualcomm to address AI and machine learning tasks on RISC-V platforms. Overall, the deal bolsters Qualcomm’s ability to offer power-efficient, AI-capable RISC-V chips for emerging markets (from wearables and IoT, where Qualcomm already uses RISC-V, to potential cloud/server applications)theregister.com. This acquisition underscores Qualcomm’s commitment to the RISC-V ecosystem and could open new revenue streams in datacenter CPUs and AI accelerators built on open architecture.

Meta to Acquire Rivos (RISC-V and AI Accelerator Startup)

Status: Confirmed (pending closure). In late 2025, Meta Platforms announced its intent to acquire Rivos Inc., a secretive chip startup, to boost Meta’s in-house semiconductor programreuters.com. The deal was reported in September 2025 (first by Bloomberg) and Meta publicly acknowledged the plan, though financial terms were not disclosedreuters.com. Rivos had been preparing a new funding round at a ~$2B valuation when multiple acquisition offers emergednextplatform.com, and Meta made an offer “too good to refuse.” The acquisition has been confirmed by investors (Walden Catalyst’s founder, Lip-Bu Tan) and is expected to close after regulatory processesnextplatform.com.
Strategic Rationale: Meta’s interest in Rivos is driven by its push for custom AI chips and RISC-V based processors. Rivos was already collaborating with Meta – the startup helped design Meta’s own MTIA (Meta Training and Inference Accelerator) chips used in Meta’s datacentersnextplatform.com. By bringing Rivos in-house, Meta gains a team of veteran chip architects (many ex-Apple and PA Semi engineersnextplatform.com nextplatform.com) and Rivos’s technology: a full-stack AI compute platform built around RISC-V CPUs and a custom data-parallel accelerator (akin to a GPU) working in a unified memory systemnextplatform.com nextplatform.com. This architecture is optimized for large-scale AI, including large language models (LLMs), with Rivos designing a hybrid CPU–GPU that can run Nvidia’s CUDA software stack despite using RISC-V coresnextplatform.com. Meta’s rationale is to control its own destiny in AI infrastructure – reducing dependence on third-party chips (like Nvidia GPUs) and cutting costsreuters.com. The Rivos acquisition fast-tracks Meta’s ability to develop open-architecture, custom AI accelerators for both training and inference, tailored to Meta’s massive social media and metaverse workloadsnextplatform.com nextplatform.com.
Business Opportunities: By integrating Rivos, Meta aims to accelerate development of its MTIA family of in-house AI chipsreuters.com. This opens opportunities to deploy more efficient AI inference engines in its datacenters – for example, handling the tremendous recommendation workloads and generative AI features across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Rivos’s technology (RISC-V CPUs paired with a CUDA-compatible AI accelerator and unified DDR/HBM memory) is ideal for running recommendation models and LLMs at lower total cost of ownershipnextplatform.com nextplatform.com. This could significantly reduce Meta’s reliance on expensive GPU farmsreuters.com. Additionally, owning Rivos’s IP allows Meta to design general-purpose server CPUs if desired, using RISC-V to potentially power cloud infrastructure without x86 or Arm licensesnextplatform.com nextplatform.com. In summary, the deal gives Meta a competitive edge in building custom silicon optimized for its scale and AI use-cases, which can improve performance per dollar for Meta’s services and drive innovation in areas like generative AI, recommendation systems, and AR/VR platforms.

Intel’s Planned Acquisition of SambaNova Systems (AI Accelerator Platform)

Status: Rumored / In Negotiation. As of late 2025, Intel is in advanced talks to acquire SambaNova Systems, an AI chip startup, in a deal reportedly around $1.6 billion (including debt)nasdaq.com. Intel and SambaNova have signed a non-binding term sheet, according to multiple reports, though the agreement could still fall through pending due diligencewired.com. The talks were first reported in October 2025wired.com, and by December 2025 sources indicated Intel was close to finalizing the buyout (possibly closing in early 2026)nasdaq.com. Notably, Intel’s CEO Lip-Bu Tan is the executive chairman of SambaNova and an early investor, which has raised questions about conflict of interest even as it facilitates the dealwired.com eetasia.com.
Strategic Rationale: Intel’s motivation to acquire SambaNova is to jump-start its AI accelerator portfolio, particularly for AI inference. SambaNova specializes in a unique reconfigurable dataflow architecture (RDU) for AI chips, which differs from traditional GPUseetasia.com. These RDU-based processors feature very large on-chip memory and are designed to map entire neural network models directly into hardware, minimizing data movement and improving efficiency for inferencingeetasia.com eetasia.com. After Nvidia asserted dominance in training chips, SambaNova pivoted to focus on large-scale inference solutionseetasia.com – an area Intel sees as a high-growth market where it can still compete. Intel has lagged in AI-specific hardware (its previous strategies with GPUs and accelerators struggledeetasia.com eetasia.com), so acquiring SambaNova could instantly provide Intel with a proven AI platform (SambaNova’s fourth-gen SN40L chips and SambaRack systems) tailored for serving complex models like Llama2 or GPT-based serviceseetasia.com. This aligns with Intel’s new “AI-first” strategy under CEO Tan, who has emphasized developing full-stack, heterogeneous AI systems for the next wave of computingeetasia.com.
Business Opportunities: If the deal proceeds, Intel would gain SambaNova’s hardware and software stack for AI inference, including chip IP, system designs, and even SambaNova’s managed cloud/API offerings (SambaNova provides systems and services such as SambaRack and SambaCloud to run AI models as turnkey solutionseetasia.com eetasia.com). This could enable Intel to offer enterprise and cloud customers an alternative to Nvidia for deploying large AI models – leveraging SambaNova’s ability to run models entirely in memory for fast inference on massive datasetseetasia.com eetasia.com. In practical terms, Intel could integrate SambaNova’s RDU tech into its product line (potentially alongside its existing Gaudi AI accelerators), and even manufacture those chips in-house. The inference market (serving trained AI models in real time) is expanding rapidly with generative AI services, and SambaNova’s technology is considered well-suited for these workloadseetasia.com eetasia.com. Additionally, acquiring SambaNova would bring a team of AI experts into Intel and strengthen its software ecosystem (SambaNova has developed compiler and runtime software for its dataflow chips). In summary, this move is about catching up in AI computing – Intel hopes to quickly obtain cutting-edge AI silicon capabilities and capitalize on the inference boom, using SambaNova’s platform to attract cloud providers and enterprise AI customers that seek high-performance, memory-rich AI accelerators beyond GPUseetasia.com eetasia.com. (Financially, the rumored ~$1.6B price would also be a bargain relative to SambaNova’s $5B valuation in 2021wired.com nasdaq.com, reflecting the opportunity for Intel to buy low and invest in a growth area.)

Marvell Acquires Celestial AI (Silicon Photonics for AI Networking)

Status: Confirmed. Marvell Technology announced a definitive agreement (Dec 2, 2025) to acquire Celestial AI for an upfront value of $3.25 billion (comprising $1.0B cash + $2.25B in stock)reuters.com reuters.com. The deal includes additional earn-outs that could bring the total to ~$5.5B if Celestial hits revenue targets by 2029nextplatform.com. The acquisition is expected to close in Q1 2026reuters.com, pending regulatory approvals. Marvell’s move came shortly after it sold its automotive networking division, signaling a pivot of funds into data center connectivity technextplatform.com.
Strategic Rationale: Celestial AI is a startup specializing in silicon photonics – using optical interconnects (“light pipes”) to link chips and system components. Marvell sees photonic technology as critical to overcoming the bandwidth and latency limitations of copper interconnects, especially for AI and cloud data centers where moving vast amounts of data between CPUs, GPUs, memory, and switches is a bottlenecknextplatform.com nextplatform.com. The generative AI boom has massively increased data-center networking demands, and photonics promises to keep pace as electrical links reach physical limitsnextplatform.com. By acquiring Celestial, Marvell gains cutting-edge optical engine IP that it can integrate into its next-generation networking, switching, and custom ASIC productsreuters.com. Marvell’s CEO Matt Murphy highlighted that Celestial’s work on photonic fabric will make Marvell a “silicon photonics powerhouse,” ready to compete with Broadcom and even Nvidia in this arenareuters.com reuters.com. In short, the rationale is to future-proof Marvell’s data center connectivity portfolio for the AI era – enabling optical links that support the scale-up of AI clusters in the second half of this decade (Murphy expects top cloud providers to deploy photonic interconnects by 2027–2028)reuters.com.
Business Opportunities: The Celestial AI acquisition opens a potential $10 billion new market for Marvell in data center photonic interconnects, according to Marvell’s projectionsreuters.com. With Celestial’s optical engine technology, Marvell can offer its cloud and hyperscaler customers (like Amazon, Microsoft, etc.) ultra-high-bandwidth chip-to-chip and rack-level interconnect solutions. For example, optical links can connect AI accelerators to memory banks or networking switches with much lower latency and higher throughput than copper – essential for large-scale AI training systems and disaggregated architectures. Marvell already has a strong custom silicon business (helping cloud firms design in-house AI chips and DPUs)reuters.com reuters.com, and now it can augment those offerings with embedded photonics. In fact, alongside this deal Marvell granted Amazon a warrant to purchase Marvell stock contingent on Amazon’s use of Marvell’s photonic productsreuters.com, underscoring that hyperscalers are eager adopters of optical connectivity. In the longer term, Marvell expects meaningful revenue from Celestial’s tech by FY2028 as AI data centers upgrade to optical fabricsreuters.com. This acquisition positions Marvell to supply the critical “plumbing” for AI – high-speed optical interconnect chips – complementing its existing data center portfolio (switches, network adapters, and custom accelerators). It also keeps Marvell competitive with peers like Broadcom, which are developing similar photonic interconnect solutions. Overall, the Celestial AI deal is about scaling up bandwidth for the AI age, ensuring Marvell capitalizes on the trend of co-packaged optics and chiplet-based system design to break through the memory and networking wall in advanced computingnextplatform.com.

Conclusion: Common Themes and Industry Trends

Each of these 2025 deals, while targeting different pieces of the semiconductor ecosystem, reflects several common themes:

Focus on AI Acceleration: All the acquisitions center around technologies for accelerating AI workloads. Qualcomm and Meta are grabbing CPU/GPU designs optimized for AI (Ventana’s vector/matrix units, Rivos’s AI-centric RISC-V platform), Intel is pursuing SambaNova’s AI inference chips, and Marvell is investing in photonic interconnects to speed up AI data throughput. The generative AI boom is a clear driver – chipmakers and tech giants are racing to develop the fastest, most efficient infrastructure for training and especially inferencing large AI modelsreuters.com.
RISC-V and Custom Silicon: A notable trend is the embrace of open-architecture RISC-V and custom chips. Qualcomm’s and Meta’s deals both revolve around RISC-V CPU technology, highlighting industry desire for alternatives to Arm and x86. Meta explicitly aims to “jump” to open-source RISC-V for future processors, seeking more control and cost efficiencynextplatform.com. The acquisitions of Ventana and Rivos give the buyers in-house talent to design tailored silicon (be it a datacenter CPU or an AI accelerator) rather than relying on off-the-shelf chips. This aligns with a broader industry movement: hyperscalers and chip firms investing in vertical integration of silicon to differentiate their products and avoid vendor lock-in.
Chiplet Integration and Advanced Packaging: Several deals reflect the trend toward modular chip architectures. Ventana’s RISC-V CPUs are delivered as chiplets that can be tiled in a package for scaling up core countstheregister.com theregister.com. Rivos was developing a combined CPU-GPU SoC, likely leveraging multi-die integration for unified memory. Marvell’s Celestial AI acquisition is tied to co-packaged optics – effectively integrating optical links with chips. All indicate that future high-performance chips will be built from multiple specialized die (CPUs, NPUs, memory, photonic I/O) connected by high-bandwidth interfaces. These acquisitions give the companies a foothold in the technologies (chiplet design, optical interconnect) necessary for such heterogeneous integration.
Generative AI and Large Workloads as Key Drivers: The need to handle large language models and other generative AI tasks underpins many of these deals. SambaNova refocused on large-model inference (serving models like Llama, GPT) with its dataflow chipseetasia.com, which likely attracted Intel’s interest to support emerging AI services. Meta’s purchase of Rivos is motivated by the huge cost of running recommendation algorithms and generative AI across billions of users – custom silicon can slash total cost of ownership for these workloadsnextplatform.com nextplatform.com. Marvell’s bet on photonics is driven by the data glut from AI model training clusters – conventional interconnects won’t scale for next-gen AI supercomputers, necessitating optical solutionsnextplatform.com. In summary, supporting generative AI at scale is a unifying goal: whether via faster processors, specialized accelerators, or better data movement, these acquisitions aim to enable the next leaps in AI capability.
Competitive and Geopolitical Underpinnings: Finally, these acquisitions highlight how major players are positioning against competitors. Qualcomm’s RISC-V foray can be seen in context of Arm’s rising royalties and Nvidia’s CPU ambitions – Qualcomm is hedging with an open ISA to maintain independence. Meta’s move can be read as an attempt to not be beholden to Nvidia’s GPU roadmap/pricing for its AI needsreuters.com. Intel’s aggressive play under new CEO Tan leverages his connections to secure an asset that could catalyze Intel’s AI strategy and keep pace with AMD/Nvidiawccftech.com. And Marvell, eyeing rivals like Broadcom and Nvidia in networking, decided it must have top-tier photonics internally to remain a leader in data center connectivityreuters.com. Moreover, many of these startups were funded by the same venture players (e.g. Walden International, which ties to Lip-Bu Tan), suggesting that the consolidation of AI startups by larger firms was anticipated as the industry matures. Overall, 2025’s acquisition activity paints a picture of an industry doubling down on AI-focused innovation – with RISC-V, specialized accelerators, and novel integration technologies at the forefront – to meet the skyrocketing demands of the AI era. Each deal reinforces the trend that the future of computing will be built on highly specialized, tightly integrated chips and infrastructure tailored for AI.

Summary of Common Trends & Business Opportunities

Trend	Business Opportunity
RISC-V Maturity	Both Qualcomm and Meta are betting that RISC-V is now ready for high-performance usage, not just embedded controllers. This opens a market for server chips free from x86/Arm licensing fees.
The “Memory Wall”	Marvell’s deal highlights that moving data is now as valuable as processing it. The opportunity lies in optical interconnects (CXL, Silicon Photonics) to decouple memory from compute.
Vertical Integration	Meta’s move confirms that Hyperscalers (Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft) will eventually design their own primary silicon to control costs and performance, shrinking the merchant silicon market (Nvidia/AMD) to “general purpose” users.
Distressed Consolidation	Intel’s purchase of SambaNova shows the window for standalone AI chip startups is closing. The opportunity is now in M&A—incumbents buying “features” (architectures/software stacks) to integrate into broader platforms.