Marvell Technology rallies in March after beat-and-raise quarter and Nvidia investment

Marvell Technology shares rallied in March, gaining about 21.3%, according to data from S&P Global Market Intelligence. The stock’s momentum followed a fourth-quarter earnings report that beat expectations and a later announcement involving a landmark investment from Nvidia and a product collaboration.

Fourth-quarter results and guidance

In its fiscal fourth quarter, Marvell reported revenue of $2.2 billion, up 22.1% year over year. Adjusted (non-GAAP) earnings per share rose 33.3% to $0.80. Management guided for a 9% sequential revenue increase in the first quarter and projected adjusted EPS of $0.79. Both the results and guidance exceeded analysts’ expectations.

Data center outlook and customer momentum

Marvell said it expects data center revenue to grow 40% in fiscal 2027 (its current year), ahead of the average analyst estimate of 25%. Over the past year, questions had been raised about whether Marvell had ceded market share with its largest customer, Amazon, for Amazon’s Trainium chips.

Despite those concerns, the forward outlook suggested that Marvell’s essential XPU and XPU-attach business—where it provides IP for custom AI chips—remains healthy. The company also highlighted customer diversification, including adding Microsoft to its roster. Microsoft unveiled its Maia2 XPU in January.

Nvidia investment and product collaboration

The networking outlook was also tied to Nvidia’s late-month announcement that it will invest $2 billion in Marvell. The deal includes a product partnership. In AI infrastructure, companies typically rely on Nvidia, build their own XPUs, or combine XPUs with Nvidia technologies.

Nvidia’s investment signals a push to integrate with Marvell to enable heterogeneous infrastructures that combine XPUs with Nvidia technologies such as NV-Link and Vera CPUs, and potentially hybrid architectures that pair Nvidia GPUs with XPU approaches. The press release also mentioned collaboration on silicon photonics, which could replace copper-based networking in next-generation AI data centers. Nvidia’s NV-Link fusion today relies on copper, and the collaboration suggests development of new optical networking products built on Nvidia technology.

Market impact and investor view

Over the past year, Nvidia has pursued similar partnerships with other semiconductor companies, reflecting investor optimism about growth potential. For Marvell, the company’s results were framed as evidence of resilience as AI infrastructure build-outs continue.

In the context of agentic AI inference, the article noted that AI agents will frequently communicate with large-language models in data centers and with each other, which can increase demand for networking capabilities where Marvell has strengths. While Marvell is described as no longer as inexpensive as it was at times last year, it trades at about 27 times this year’s earnings, and the stock was characterized as attractive for investors bullish on networking growth tied to generative AI.