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A logo of Mellanox Technologies is seen on its building in Yokneam, Israel, on March 4, 2019. Mellanox Technologies, an Israel-based chip maker, said on March 11 that U.S. computer giant Nvidia Corporation agreed to buy it for about 6.9 billion U.S. dollars in cash. The deal marks the biggest exit yet for an Israeli high-tech company in 2019 and the third largest-ever acquisition deal of an Israeli high-tech company. (Xinhua/JINI)

JERUSALEM, March 11 (Xinhua) -- Mellanox Technologies, an Israel-based chip maker, said on Monday that U.S. computer giant Nvidia Corporation agreed to buy it for about 6.9 billion U.S. dollars in cash.

"Nvidia and Mellanox today announced that the companies have reached a definitive agreement under which Nvidia will acquire Mellanox," Mellanox said in a statement.

The expected acquisition will unite two leading companies in the field of high-performance computing. "Together, Nvidia's computing platform and Mellanox's interconnects power over 250 of the world's TOP500 supercomputers and have as customers every major cloud service provider and computer maker," Mellanox said.

According to Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, the deal unites "Nvidia's accelerated computing platform with Mellanox's world-renowned accelerated networking platform under one roof to create next-generation datacenter-scale computing solutions."

"We share the same vision for accelerated computing as Nvidia," Eyal Waldman, founder and CEO of Mellanox, said in the statement. "Combining our two companies comes as a natural extension of our longstanding partnership... This combination will foster the creation of powerful technology and fantastic opportunities for our people," he added.

Founded in 1999, Mellanox is headquartered in Yokneam, a town in northern Israel.

The company is a supplier of computer networking products for the high-performance computing market, data centers, cloud computing, and financial services.

The deal marks the biggest exit yet for an Israeli high-tech company in 2019 and the third largest-ever acquisition deal of an Israeli high-tech company.