Nvidia will invest $2 billion in Silicon Valley chipmaker Marvell, the Financial Times and Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday.

The move is aimed at strengthening competitiveness in networking technology linking AI data centres. The two companies will jointly develop silicon photonics as part of the investment. They aim to upgrade data centre networking systems with optical technology to increase data transmission speeds.

Marvell has supported large U.S. cloud service companies, including Amazon, in designing their own AI chips. With the cooperation, big tech companies will be able to integrate their own AI chips more easily with Nvidia's data centre infrastructure.

The two companies said the cooperation will enable "seamless integration" between custom AI chips and Nvidia's GPU, networking and storage systems.

Marvell Chief Executive Matt Murphy (맷 머피) said expanding cooperation with Nvidia shows the importance of high-speed connectivity, optical interconnects and accelerated infrastructure in AI expansion. He said it will contribute to improving customers' scalability and efficiency.

Marvell acquired Celestial AI for $3.3 billion last month. Celestial AI is developing photonics technology that links hundreds of thousands of AI accelerator chips.

Nvidia has expanded beyond GPUs since acquiring networking company Mellanox for $6.9 billion in 2019. In December last year, it effectively acquired AI chip startup Groq in a deal worth $20 billion.