NRI PULSE STAFF REPORT
NVIDIA has hired Rochan Sankar, the Indian-origin founder, president, and CEO of Silicon Valley AI-hardware startup Enfabrica, in a deal reported to be valued at more than $900 million in cash and stock. The company is also licensing key elements of Enfabrica’s interconnect technology and bringing several core team members on board, according to multiple industry reports.
Sankar, who has built his career in chip architecture and data-center networking, is expected to play a central role in strengthening NVIDIA’s AI infrastructure and networking roadmap. The move underscores the company’s push beyond GPU design toward more comprehensive, system-level solutions for large-scale AI computing.
A graduate of the University of Toronto with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, Sankar also holds an MBA from the Wharton School. Before founding Enfabrica, he spent several years at Broadcom, where he served as senior director and led the company’s data-center Ethernet-switch silicon business. He played a key role in defining and launching multiple generations of Broadcom’s widely used Tomahawk and Trident chips. At Enfabrica, Sankar oversaw chip architecture, data-center fabric design, and strategic product development, and holds several patents in these areas.
NVIDIA’s decision to bring him and his team on board reflects a growing recognition that AI performance now depends as much on networking, memory bandwidth, and interconnect efficiency as on raw compute power. Enfabrica’s technology is designed to reduce bottlenecks and link tens of thousands of GPUs into unified clusters, a capability that has become increasingly important as companies train ever-larger AI models.
Industry analysts have characterized the arrangement as a hybrid “acqui-hire plus technology license,” rather than a full acquisition. NVIDIA and Enfabrica have declined to comment publicly on the terms.
For Sankar, the move marks a transition from startup founder to senior executive inside the world’s most influential AI-hardware company. For NVIDIA, it signals a deepening focus on the infrastructure that underpins large-scale AI, from networking to cluster architecture. The full impact of the hire is expected to unfold as NVIDIA integrates Enfabrica’s technology and expertise into its future systems.
Cover image credits: Rochan Sankar/LinkedIn; background/Nvidia Newsroom/Instagram.
