Nvidia is quietly building a multibillion-dollar behemoth to rival its chips business

Nvidia has been strategically expanding its networking business, positioning it as a multibillion-dollar division that rivals its core chips segment. This growth stems largely from the 2020 acquisition of Mellanox, an Israeli networking company, which enabled Nvidia to offer a comprehensive full-stack solution integrating GPUs with advanced data center networking technology. Nvidia’s networking division, which includes products like NVLink and InfiniBand switches, supports the infrastructure needed for AI data centers or “AI factories” designed to train AI models. The division reported $11 billion in revenue last quarter, marking a 267% year-over-year increase and making it the company’s second-largest revenue source behind compute. Despite its rapid growth and significant revenue, Nvidia’s networking business has not received the same level of public attention as its chip or gaming segments. Senior executives attribute this partly to the complexity of networking technology and its traditional perception as a peripheral function. However, Nvidia leadership emphasizes that networking is now fundamental to modern computing, especially in AI workloads