Nvidia Corp. today announced that it has struck an agreement to acquire Cumulus Networks Inc., a data center networking startup backed by $129 million in funding from Sequoia Capital, Andreessen Horowitz and others. 

The terms of the deal are not being disclosed.

Cumulus sells a Linux-based operating system for data center switches that is used by the likes of Verizon Communications Inc., PayPal Holdings Inc. and NASA. The startup also offers a software toolkit called NetQ for easing network maintenance.

Nvidia’s decision to snap up Cumulus has to do with its recently completed $6.9 billion acquisition of Mellanox Technologies Ltd., a network equipment supplier whose products are widely used in data centers. Some of those products run on Cumulus software. Mellanox’s Spectrum Ethernet switches ship with Cumulus Linux while its bare-metal switches, which don’t have an operating system preinstalled, use a different software tool developed by the startup to help customers configure their deployments. 

The companies’ relationship dates back to 2016. By bringing Cumulus in-house, Nvidia will gain control over a software component key to Mellanox’s product portfolio and thereby remove the possibility of a rival acquiring it. The chipmaker will also gain the ability to align Cumulus’ feature development roadmap more closely with its own goals.

The same consideration recently led Mellanox to buy Titan IC Systems Ltd., another company whose technology it uses in its products. Dror Golderberg, the head of software architecture at the Nvidia subsidiary, explained at the time that the deal will create an opportunity to better optimize Titan IC’s technology for Mellanox’s hardware. “There are simply some things that we couldn’t do as two separate companies that together we will be able to accomplish,” the executive wrote in a March blog post. 

Nvidia no doubt has similar plans to optimize Cumulus operating systems for Mellanox switches. Now that they’re moving under the same corporate umbrella, Cumulus’ software engineers will be able to work more directly with Mellanox hardware teams. It’s worth noting that Cumulus’ operating system also supports competing switches from Broadcom Inc., but Nvidia didn’t say what will happen to those integrations in the acquisition announcement today. 

“With Cumulus, Nvidia can innovate and optimize across the entire networking stack from chips and systems to software including analytics like Cumulus NetQ,” Amir Katz, Nvidia’s vice president of Ethernet switch, wrote in a blog post.  “The ability to innovate across the entire technology stack will help us deliver performance at scale for the accelerated, software-defined data center.”

Cisco Systems Inc. has also embraced a whole-stack development roadmap spanning from the chip layer to software. In December, the networking giant unveiled Silicon ONE, a homegrown chip designed to power its next generation of switches and routers.

Photo: Nvidia