Nvidia is investing $3.5 billion in MediaTek through convertible bonds, deepening a partnership that spans AI data center infrastructure, PC chips and automotive platforms, the companies said Monday, according to TechCrunch and SiliconAngle.
MediaTek's custom chip design unit will adopt Nvidia's NVLink Fusion interconnect, which the companies say moves data between processors more than 10 times faster than standard PCIe 6.0, SiliconAngle reported. The technology is meant to let cloud providers and AI developers build custom accelerator chips that still plug into Nvidia's rack scale data center systems.
The deal also extends the companies' existing work on Nvidia's RTX Spark and DGX Spark chips for consumer and developer PCs, and on MediaTek's Dimensity Auto systems on chip, which use Nvidia graphics chiplets for vehicle displays, according to TechCrunch.
"Together, we're building platforms that bring Nvidia accelerated computing to new markets and give customers the freedom to create differentiated AI systems at enormous scale," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said, according to SiliconAngle. MediaTek has doubled its own forecast for annual data center chip design revenue to $2 billion, SiliconAngle reported.
Amazon, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic are all building their own AI chips to cut their Nvidia bill, TechCrunch reported. Funding MediaTek's custom silicon business, while tying it to Nvidia's own interconnect standard, is Nvidia's way of profiting from that shift instead of just losing sales to it.