Nvidia's $3.5B MediaTek investment shows its strategy amid Big Tech's custom chip push
Nvidia is investing $3.5 billion in Taiwanese chipmaker MediaTek, giving it access to technology for designing custom AI chips that plug into Nvidia's data center ecosystem. The move helps Nvidia retain its infrastructure dominance as major tech companies increasingly build their own chips.
Nvidia has announced a $3.5 billion investment in Taiwan-based chipmaker MediaTek. Under the agreement, MediaTek will adopt Nvidia technology that enables it to design custom chips for AI companies and cloud providers, chips that can be directly integrated into Nvidia-based data centers.
The deal arrives as more AI firms and major cloud providers, including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, OpenAI and Anthropic, invest in developing their own chips to reduce reliance on Nvidia's GPUs. Agreements like this one allow Nvidia to concede some ground in custom silicon while maintaining its dominant position as the backbone of data center infrastructure.
Dion Harris, Nvidia's senior director of HPC and AI hyperscaler infrastructure solutions, told reporters on a Monday call that the company expanded beyond pure computing chips years ago, describing Nvidia as an AI infrastructure company.
Access to NVLink technology
As part of the partnership, MediaTek gains access to Nvidia's NVLink Fusion ecosystem, including NVLink, which allows chips from different manufacturers to communicate with each other at high speed. Last week, Nvidia announced a similar, though not investment-based, partnership with Amazon Web Services, which plans to deploy an additional two million Nvidia GPUs and integrate NVLink Fusion into its infrastructure.
Harris noted that nearly every cloud provider and AI model developer already deploys Nvidia's platform in some form, meaning MediaTek's customers will be able to standardize their infrastructure while still deploying custom chips on the same platform.
MediaTek has been gradually building out its custom data center ASIC business for several years and said in June that it expects the segment to generate $2 billion in revenue in 2026, with plans to expand its market share in coming years.
The two companies will also continue collaborating on other projects, including Nvidia's DGX Spark developer desktop computer and the consumer-focused RTX Spark, as well as on software-defined, AI-powered vehicle platforms, with MediaTek's automotive platforms working alongside Nvidia's Drive AGX technology.
