Marvell tanks after reporting so-so earnings, dragging Broadcom and Nvidia down with it

Marvell Technology is getting Nvidia’d after releasing its fourth-quarter results after the close on Wednesday. The chip designer posted modestly better-than-expected results and an outlook that was in line with analysts’ estimates, but the stock is tumbling all the same.

While its Q3 earnings and revenues were 5.9% and 4.3% above expectations, respectively, those same Q4 figures were just 1.5% and 1.3% above its consensus estimates.

These numbers, “while solid, might disappoint when compared with typical expectations for sizable beat and raises from AI semiconductor companies,” Bloomberg Intelligence analysts Kunjan Sobhani and Oscar Hernandez Tejada wrote.

Shares were down 18% year to date heading into this report, and down about 18% more in premarket trading.

Marvell has carved out its own foothold in the AI boom, helping make custom chips (ASICs) for the likes of Amazon. But these results are clearly failing to wow traders, and casting a pall over the industry: Broadcom, which, like Marvell, also has a big customized chip business, is off nearly 5% in early trading ahead of the release of earnings after the close on Thursday, while Nvidia is down about 3%.

Adding to the pain for major US chip companies was the release of a new open-source reasoning model from Alibaba that claims to have performance on par with that of DeepSeek’s R1 model, underscoring the competitive pressures in the space from companies that aren’t spending as much on capex as so-called hyperscalers.