TEL AVIV (Reuters) – Nvidia Corp has submitted an offer to buy Israeli chip designer Mellanox, the Calcalist financial news website said on Sunday.
Nvidia is competing for Mellanox with Intel Corp, which has already offered $6 billion for the Israeli company, Calcalist said. It cited estimates that Nvidia would pay at least 10 percent more than the price offered by Intel.
Nvidia’s advantage is that it would have a greater chance of obtaining U.S. and Chinese regulatory approval as Intel and Mellanox control the market for InfiniBand technology, a networking communications standard commonly used in supercomputers, Calcalist said.
Mellanox, which makes chips and other hardware for data center servers that power cloud computing, said it does not comment on rumors or speculation. Officials at Nvidia could not be reached for comment outside of regular U.S. business hours.
Intel has declined to comment on reports that it is seeking to acquire Mellanox.
(Reporting by Tova Cohen; Editing by Steven Scheer)
