On September 4, British outlet TechRadar reported new details of the GB10 Grace Blackwell chip jointly developed by Nvidia and Taiwan's MediaTek, fueling speculation that the U.S. GPU giant may be considering a $73 billion bid to acquire the chip designer.

The GB10 combines MediaTek's CPU and memory design expertise with Nvidia's latest GPU technology. Manufactured on TSMC's 3nm process, the chip integrates 20 Arm v9.2 CPU cores—including 10 Cortex-X925 and 10 Cortex-X725—alongside a Blackwell GPU capable of 31 TFLOPs FP32 performance. With NVLink-C2C interconnect and support for up to 128GB of unified LPDDR5X memory, GB10 can handle models exceeding 200 billion parameters, making it a showcase of advanced heterogeneous integration.

Analysts note that the collaboration underscores Nvidia's growing reliance on MediaTek's SoC experience as it expands into Arm-based laptops and servers. Some industry watchers suggest this deepening partnership could pave the way for an eventual acquisition, echoing Nvidia's previous $40 billion attempt to buy Arm in 2022.

However, the likelihood of Nvidia acquiring MediaTek remains highly uncertain. At a market capitalization of around $73 billion, MediaTek would demand a significant premium in any deal, far above the rumored figure. In addition, regulatory scrutiny poses a formidable barrier. Taiwan's government is unlikely to approve the sale of one of its most strategic semiconductor firms, while Beijing would almost certainly oppose any move that could disrupt China's smartphone supply chain.

Strategically, the benefits are also debatable. While MediaTek's strength in mobile SoCs is clear, analysts argue the fit with Nvidia's current focus on AI infrastructure and system-level integration is limited, raising concerns about post-merger synergies.

For now, the GB10 collaboration itself stands as a milestone in cross-company semiconductor design, highlighting how Nvidia and MediaTek can combine strengths to push performance boundaries. Whether this partnership evolves into something larger remains a subject of speculation rather than imminent reality.