MRVL.US (MRVL.US)'s $115 billion acquisition of Lumentum (LITE.US) is the biggest merger and acquisition of the year! Wall Street investment banks became winners Goldman Sachs's annual merger and acquisition deal volume broke 1.1 trillion US dollars for the first time

The Zhitong Finance App learned that the artificial intelligence (AI) boom is driving the global M&A market to continuously set new records. Chipmaker MRVL.US (MRVL.US) announced on Monday that it will acquire data center laser manufacturer Lumentum Holdings (LITE.US) for approximately $115 billion. According to data, in terms of equity value, this deal is not only the world's largest merger and acquisition since 2026, but also the largest merger and acquisition transaction in the global technology industry other than the merger of SpaceX (SPCX.US) and XAI.

The deal also propelled large-scale global mergers and acquisitions to a new record in 2026. According to the data, the number of mergers and acquisitions announced this year with a transaction amount of 10 billion US dollars or more has surpassed any previous year. According to a statement issued by Maywell on Monday, the company will acquire Lumentum at a price of $1,132 per share, a premium of about 23.9% over the latter's closing price on October 28.

This is also Mywell's largest acquisition to date. Lumentum mainly produces optical communication equipment and lasers for use in data centers and other fields. As the demand for AI model training and inference grows rapidly, data centers need to transfer data at high speed between a large number of servers and chips, and the importance of optical communication technology also increases.

This acquisition highlights that competition in the AI industry is extending from the chip itself to infrastructure fields such as data transmission and network connectivity, and the strategic value of related technology suppliers is constantly increasing.

In addition to setting new records for mergers and acquisitions in the technology industry, the deal also brought landmark business results to many Wall Street investment banks. Among them, Qatalyst Partners, a boutique investment bank focusing on mergers and acquisitions in the technology industry, acted as Mywell's chief financial advisor. According to data compiled by Bloomberg, this is the largest M&A deal the agency has participated in so far.

Goldman Sachs, which also provides advisory services to Mywell, also used this deal to achieve the first time that the total number of global mergers and acquisitions it participated in in a single year exceeded 1.1 trillion US dollars.

In fact, Goldman Sachs has participated in several major mergers and acquisitions this year, including New Era Energy (NEE.US)'s acquisition of Domini Resources (D.US) for about $67 billion, and a privatization deal of over $10 billion for utility and power producer AES Corp.

J.P. Morgan is the third financial advisor Mwell has hired. On the other side of the deal, Citigroup and Evercore acted as financial advisors to Lumentum. The deal is also one of the largest mergers and acquisitions involving each of these two institutions.

It is worth noting that in recent years, Citi has been actively recruiting investment banking talents from competitors, hoping to seek advisory positions in more large-scale mergers and acquisitions.

The Maywell deal with Lumentum also reflects that the AI investment boom is becoming an important force driving global mergers and acquisitions.

As tech giants continue to invest huge sums of money to build AI infrastructure, related mergers and acquisitions are no longer limited to chip manufacturers, but are gradually expanding to various fields such as professional technology suppliers, data center operators, and power and utility companies.

Companies hope to acquire key technologies through acquisitions, expand business scale, and occupy a more favorable position in the wave of AI infrastructure construction.

Driven by this trend, 2026 is becoming one of the strongest performing years in the global M&A market. Maywell's huge acquisition of 115 billion US dollars not only further boosted the scale of transactions throughout the year, but also highlighted that the development of the AI industry is profoundly changing the M&A layout of global companies.