By Adam Levy
Publication Date: 2026-04-17 14:14:00
Nvidia (NVDA +1.28%) is by far the biggest chipmaker in the world, taking in hundreds of billions of dollars from big tech companies that are outfitting AI data centers with its high-end AI processors. Instead of letting that all of that cash sit on its balance sheet, Nvidia has been strategically investing some of it in other companies. It notably took a $5 billion stake in Intel last fall, and it recently bought a $2 billion stake in another chipmaker.
Not only does Nvidia’s investment indicate the company is making notable moves in the semiconductor industry, but it also creates a durable partnership that could give it a leg up. And despite the market’s positive reaction to the news, it’s not too late for retail investors to follow Nvidia’s lead and buy the stock.
Image source: Getty Images.
Nvidia’s investing in the competition
Nvidia’s latest investment is Marvell Technologies (MRVL +3.00%). The company has received a lot of attention over the last few years for its custom AI accelerator (XPU) business. Marvell designs Microsoft‘s (MSFT +2.54%) custom Maia chips and previously designed Amazon‘s (AMZN +1.81%) Trainium and Inferentia chips.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy thinks there’s significant potential for XPUs. He likens them to Amazon’s custom CPU, Graviton. Amazon introduced the Graviton in 2018, noting that it delivered 40% better price performance than x86 processors like Intel’s. Today, Jassy says 98% of the top 1,000 customers of Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud use…
