Marvell Technology Acquires Celestial AI—A $3.25B Gamble on the Future!

Marvell Technology has announced a major strategic leap with the acquisition of Celestial AI in a $3.25 billion cash-and-stock deal, signaling its most aggressive push yet into next-generation photonic interconnects. The deal, unveiled alongside its record-setting Q3 FY2026 earnings, arrives amid a sharp inflection point in AI infrastructure and hyperscale data center buildouts. Celestial AI’s core technology—a disruptive Photonic Fabric platform designed for ultra-high bandwidth and low-latency optical connectivity—is expected to slot directly into Marvell’s Data Center Group portfolio, fueling growth well beyond traditional copper-based architectures. With hyperscalers like AWS already engaged and AI infrastructure rapidly evolving toward multi-rack, million-GPU clusters, the acquisition could potentially position Marvell to lead the emerging scale-up interconnect category. Importantly, Celestial AI is expected to begin contributing $500 million in annualized revenue by the end of FY2028, doubling to $1 billion by FY2029, with additional runway from disaggregated memory and die-to-die optical use cases.