Marvell shares have soared 241% in a year. CEO says this is a key reason why

Mad Money

Published Tue, Sep 8 20267:07 PM EDT

Marvell Technology CEO Matt Murphy said one of the keys to the chipmaker's massive run over the past year is something that took a decade to build: trust with the world's largest technology companies.

Shares of Marvell have soared roughly 241% over the past 12 months, compared with just 6.6% for rival Broadcom, as the company deepened relationships across the artificial intelligence ecosystem, including major partnerships with Nvidia in March and Google in August.

"In this market, these large hyperscale customers and the ecosystem around it, it's really based on trust," Murphy said on CNBC's "Mad Money" on Tuesday. "I think trust has been a huge part of ... our brand and our credibility."

He said hyperscalers need confidence that suppliers can deliver increasingly complex chips on time and at scale. It's a playbook that helped fuel AMD's turnaround under Lisa Su, who made consistent product execution and on-time delivery a priority after taking over as CEO in October 2014.

"Can you trust the engineering team and the company is going to deliver the chip?" Murphy said. "Can you trust the management team that they're going to shoot you straight? Can you trust that the capacity and the supply is going to be there, and can you trust the CEO at the end of the day?"

Murphy said that reputation has allowed Marvell to work across the AI ecosystem rather than depend on any one customer or chip architecture. He noted the company provides custom silicon to all four major U.S. hyperscalers and sells its optical connectivity products broadly across the industry.

"We are basically the Switzerland of this entire market right now, we work with everybody," Murphy said.

Those relationships have fueled explosive growth at Marvell, with data center revenue projected to rise 60% in fiscal 2027, according to FactSet, before accelerating slightly to 61% growth in fiscal 2028. Investors hope to hear more about Marvell's long-term financial targets when the company holds an investor day in early October.

Marvell picked up a major win in August when it announced a multi-year technology supply agreement with Google, which had long been considered Broadcom's most important custom-chip customer. But a new partnership between Marvell's own longtime customer, Amazon, and rival Qualcomm on Tuesday highlighted the competition for hyperscaler business. When asked by CNBC's Jim Cramer about the deal, Murphy dismissed concerns about Marvell's position.

"I think it's a competitive market," Murphy said. "We're very confident in our position and how we've evolved in this market across all the U.S. hyperscalers and the entire ecosystem."