Marvell Technology has given Google the right to buy up to $12.2 billion of its stock, according to a regulatory filing made public Wednesday, formalizing one of the more unusual financial arrangements to emerge from the AI infrastructure buildout. The warrant covers nearly 59 million Marvell shares — about 10% of the chipmaker's outstanding stock — at a strike price of $206.58 apiece, and it vests not on a calendar but on how much Google actually spends with Marvell on custom silicon.
Marvell shares jumped roughly 10% on the news, adding close to $18 billion in market value in a single session, as investors read the deal as confirmation that Google's TPU-linked chip orders are large and durable enough for a supplier to bet its own equity on them. The warrant structure was first reported by CNBC, which detailed the mechanics of the arrangement from Marvell's SEC filing.
How the Warrant Vests
The vesting schedule is unusual for a public-company equity grant. A small slice — about 1.36 million shares — vests on a standard quarterly basis over the agreement's first year. The remaining 57.6 million shares are split into 240 equal installments, with one installment vesting for every $500 million in revenue Marvell books from Google's purchases of qualifying products. Full vesting would require Google to buy roughly $120 billion worth of chips from Marvell between now and Marvell's fiscal 2033 — an average of about $18.5 billion a year.
Crucially, none of that spending is contractually guaranteed. Google has made no binding commitment to hit the $120 billion threshold; the warrant simply rewards Marvell proportionally if and when the orders materialize, giving both companies aligned incentives without locking Google into a fixed-dollar contract.
The products covered by the deal go beyond Marvell's existing custom application-specific integrated circuit work. The agreement specifically names AI inference accelerators, storage controllers, network interface controllers, memory interface controllers, and near-memory compute products — components that plug into the ecosystem around Google's in-house Tensor Processing Units, which Google uses as an alternative to Nvidia's data center GPUs for training and running its Gemini models.
Part of a Broader Custom-Silicon Race
The arrangement underscores how central custom chip partnerships have become to the AI buildout. Google has spent years developing TPUs with contract manufacturers, and Marvell has positioned itself alongside Broadcom as one of the two dominant partners helping hyperscalers design chips tailored to their own workloads rather than relying solely on off-the-shelf GPUs. Marvell's custom silicon business has grown into a significant share of its data-center revenue over the past two years, and CEO Matt Murphy has repeatedly told investors that bookings across the company's data-center portfolio remain strong heading into fiscal 2028.
We are seeing strong demand and exceptional bookings across our entire data center portfolio.
— Matt Murphy, Marvell CEO, on the company's Q1 fiscal 2027 earnings call
Analysts who cover the stock described the deal as a strong signal of confidence in Marvell's roadmap. The company had faced skepticism earlier this year about whether it could retain Google's business against competition from Broadcom and in-house design efforts, making a multibillion-dollar equity commitment from the customer itself a notable vote of confidence.
What's Next
Neither Google nor Marvell has disclosed a specific timetable for how quickly the purchase commitments implied by the deal might be reached, and Marvell's own quarterly filings will offer the clearest read on progress as installments vest. For now, the deal adds Marvell to a short list of chip suppliers — alongside Broadcom's arrangements with Google and other hyperscalers — whose fortunes are now explicitly tied to the pace of AI infrastructure spending by the largest cloud providers.
