(Reuters) – Chipmaker Nvidia Corp said on Thursday it has received approval from Chinese authorities for its $6.9 billion proposed acquisition of Mellanox Technologies Ltd.
Mellanox shares rose nearly 2% in afternoon trading, while Nvidia jumped about 4%.
Nvidia, known for its powerful gaming graphics chips, wants to bolster its data center and artificial intelligence business through the takeover, its biggest deal, to better compete with rival Intel.
U.S. and EU antitrust authorities have already given approvals for the deal, which is expected to close before April 27, 2020, Nvidia said.
Besides offering gaming chips, Nvidia now also sells chips to speed up artificial intelligence tasks such as teaching servers to recognize images. Mellanox makes chips that connect those servers together inside the data center.
(Reporting by Ayanti Bera in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
