Sources: NVIDIA Weighing Bid for Intel and Nokia, as Well as Others

NVIDIA is preparing a roll-up bid for five of the companies it has already invested in, according to industry sources. It is prepared to pay up to $400 billion for a portfolio of as many as five public companies, including chipmaker Intel and telecoms infrastructure player Nokia, using a combination of stock and cash.

The high-profile deal by the AI infrastructure giant would also include so-called neoclouds CoreWeave and Nebius. For good measure, NVIDIA hopes to toss in a purchase of French AI company Mistral AI, with a total purchase price of $356 billion in aggregate for the entire portfolio, with some wiggle room to move up. Sources say that NVIDIA is also weighing other possibilities. Negotiations are ongoing and nothing has been finalized.

Additional companies that have been part of acquisition discussions include Walmart, MongoDB, Cockroach Labs (which we believe makes cockroach databases), All Things Bugs, Chirps, Sherwin-Williams Co., and the manufacturing company Putzmeister. Marvell, which NVIDIA just invested in this week, is not included in discussions.

In case you didn't know, Putzmeister means Plaster Master in German.

Going Overboard?

“If this happens, it’s game over," said Tad Overboard, an investment banker with Kickback Partners, based in Troy, New York. “Especially with Putzmeister. They’ll dominate markets from AI infrastructure to cockroach databases, paint, and German concrete. I'm especially excited about the combination of cockroaches and concrete."

One intriguing sub-combination, said Overboard, would be a tie-up of Putzmeister with Cockroach Labs, which could yield Cockroach Putzmeister. Overboard also noted that owning concrete and paint companies is especially useful in building datacenters around the world, which presents "dynamic synergies.”

“What used to be a conflict is now a synergy,” said former equity analyst and investment banker Jack Grubman 25 years ago.

Yes, it's true the quote is not in the context of these deals, but we thought we’d include it just because it’s so brilliant.

The Twelve-Layer Multiverse

The gigantic move would represent a grand expansion of NVIDIA Founder and CEO Jensen Huang’s “five-layer ecosystem” strategy, which seeks to integrate as many layers of the AI stack as possible. NVIDIA has been gradually expanding its footprint and influence in the industry through dozens of investments in both public and private companies. It has already made investments in many of the companies it is seeking to acquire, including Intel, Nokia, CoreWeave, and Nebius.

Insiders, including Overboard, said the deal is being propelled by a change in Huang’s thinking. The strategy has now shifted to the “Full Multiverse Ecosystem” strategy, in which NVIDIA owns as much of the universe as possible—in multiple dimensions.

“They’re quintupling down on the ecosystem strategy, which we are calling the ’12-layer Multiverse,’” said Justin Case, a senior equity analyst with Bearly Managed Equities in Stamford, Conn. “They can also tie together quantum compute assets to reach across the time-space barrier. It’s pretty epic, brah.”

Case said that NVIDIA is also believed to be chatting with Walmart about a potential joint venture or outright acquisition in a deal that would lever Walmart’s substantial retail footprint to provide AI inferencing services to people camping in its parking lots. But it's also possible he's making things up to help his unemployed Uncle Jake in Philadelphia make some extra cash trading meme stocks on Robin Hood (Jake's holdings at the time of this writing included Nokia, Walmart, and CoreWeave).

Trillions and Trillions

It’s true the deals represent a fudge-ton of cash. But it’s not even a trillion dollars, so these days that means it’s really nothing.

The financing of the deals has yet be disclosed, but surely NVIDIA won’t have trouble coming up with the money. With its considerable financial resources and seemingly inexhaustible capability to raise money, invest, and promote trillions of dollars in sales as well as own every square inch of every datacenter on earth even without giving free passes to the most influential analysts for GTC, NVIDIA has the heft to make it all happen with the company’s $4.2 trillion market cap and Huang’s projected $1 trillion in sales over the next two years.

As far as we know (or don’t know), the Nokia and Intel deals are furthest along, with NVIDIA offering a 20% market premium for each—or $260 billion for Intel and Nokia for $53.8 billion (most recently, Intel’s market capitalization was $220 billion and Nokia's was $45 billion). Meme stock boards have already gone crazy.

A government source close to the recently demolished East Wing said the deal should breeze through regulatory approval because “there really aren’t any regulations any more.”

It would be a remarkable combination of old and new with Intel and Nokia—traditional companies that once ruled the markets for chips and phones but are now a fraction of their former value. One interesting asset being included in the deal would be Nokia’s substantial patent portfolio, which includes the intellectual property of the former Bell Labs, once the property of AT&T and its infamous spin-off, Lucent Technologies, one of the most valuable companies during the telecom bubble that was covered by Jack Grubman, who still reads our newsletter.

Coincidence? We don't think so.

Futuriom Take: Like Overboard, we are excited about the potential combination of telecom patents, neoclouds, cockroach databases, and German concrete. And happy April Fool’s Day!

Disclosure: The author, Al Koholic, is not a real person. This story is fake news. The author of this satirical story did not hold any of the stocks mentioned at the time of writing. He's also never been granted a free pass to GTC, which he's not bitter about at all.