Cavium, Inc. (CAVM)

Cavium, Inc. was a fabless semiconductor company in San Jose, California that designed processors and controllers for networking, communications, storage and data center equipment. Its OCTEON family of multi-core processors was widely used in routers, firewalls and wireless gear, and it later developed ThunderX, an Arm-based server processor line, along with LiquidIO smart network adapters and XPliant programmable switch chips.

Founded in 2000, Cavium went public on Nasdaq in May 2007 under the ticker CAVM. The company grew both through its own designs and through acquisitions, and it became a notable supplier of security and packet processing silicon to large networking equipment makers. Its chips were sold to many of the largest makers of networking, wireless and security equipment, and the company invested heavily in multi-core processor designs that could handle encryption and packet inspection at high speeds. Over time it broadened its range to include server, storage and switching products.

In August 2016 Cavium bought QLogic, a maker of Fibre Channel and Ethernet adapters, for about $1.4 billion. The deal roughly doubled its revenue and gave it a strong position in storage networking for servers. QLogic brought established customer relationships with major server makers and a profitable adapter business. Cavium financed the purchase with cash and new debt, along with stock issued to QLogic holders.

In November 2017 Marvell Technology agreed to acquire Cavium in a cash and stock deal valued at roughly $6 billion, aiming to build a broader infrastructure chip company. The merger closed on July 6, 2018. Each Cavium share was converted into $40.00 in cash plus 2.1757 Marvell common shares, and Cavium's stock was removed from Nasdaq.

Cavium's processor, networking and storage products became part of Marvell, which continues to sell the OCTEON line and uses the combined business as a base for its data infrastructure strategy. Marvell trades on Nasdaq under the ticker MRVL. The combination helped Marvell shift away from consumer storage chips toward networking, data center and carrier infrastructure markets.