Nvidia's $6.9bn Mellanox munch gets closer after Chinese regulators sign off

Nvidia's $6.9bn deal to gobble networking kit maker Mellanox has been approved by China's competition watchdog.

The deal, announced in March 2019, was approved by China's Anti-Monopoly Bureau on Thursday. The watchdog said that the two companies could not make bundling mandatory or attach any other "unreasonable trading conditions" (Chinese language) when selling devices in China.

Mellanox's InfiniBand interconnect provides one of the fastest ways to link individual servers, rivaling Cisco's Omni-Path tech. The company's kit is also a favourite of supercomputer builders. Indeed its products adorn Summit and Sierra, the two most powerful supercomputers listed on the latest latest Top500 list.

Mellanox is hot property in the hyperscale age. Microsoft, Xilinx, and Intel were all interested in the company, according to reports.

The acquisition will further Nvidia's push into providing kit to hyperscalers. The Santa Clara-based company made a name for itself by selling high-end GPUs to PC gamers. But more recently, the company has shifted its attention to enterprise solutions, such as its DGX server range.

In February, Nvidia revenues of $10.9bn for 2020, a slight decline of seven per cent from the previous year. At the time the company forecast that the coronavirus pandemic, which was then largely localised in China, would only cost around $100m in lost production in revenue.

European and Mexican regulators have already signed off the deal. Nvidia expects the transaction to close on April 27. ®