Two weeks after the announcement that Mellanox Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq:MLNX) was to be acquired by Nvidia for $6.9 billion, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is in Israel and has given a joint press conference with Mellanox founder and CEO Eyal Waldman.
Asked about the future of Mellanox, Huang said, "Our intention is that Mellanox will stay in Israel as an independent entity, which will continue to grow in Israel. Each of Mellanox's product lines, Infiniband, Ethernet will carry on as usual. I plan and hope that Eyal will lead Mellanox in Israel for as long as he lives. It will be a great honor to build the company with him."
When asked if there are any guarantees about this and that perhaps Huang's successor will change Nvidia's policy on Mellanox, he said, "I've been Nvidia CEO for 26 years and I'm only just beginning to be good at my job."
Waldman intervened to say, "I will work with Jensen to make the company excellent."
Huang continued, "There will be no layoffs at Mellanox. We will keep on every single employee and we plan enlarging the center here. Perhaps in Israel you don't see what is happening but we have been working with Mellanox in a range of areas around the world and this company is known for its technological excellence. There is no reason for us not to continue investing in it, which is the reason after all why we bought the company. I've liked Mellanox for some time and this has been a one-time opportunity to buy it. Spread the rumor. We will hire more employees. Mellanox is a special treasure and consequently we did something exceptional and carried out such a large acquisition."
He added, "We don't expect synergies in costs. The market was uncertain about what benefits the acquisition would bring us because usually we are talking about cuts and layoffs, but that is not our plan, because these two companies complement each other well. Mellanox is in networking and we are in GPU - together we want to invent the future."
Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on March 25, 2019
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