NVIDIA is expanding its mark in the processing and high performance computing industry with the acquisition of Mellanox. The company is acquiring Mellanox for $125 per share, approximately $6.9 billion total.

According to NVIDIA, the acquisition will help tackle the growing data and compute load necessary for AI, scientific computing and data analytics. Together, NVIDIA’s GPUs and Mellanox’s intelligent networking solutions will address the performance demands on hyperscale and enterprise data centers.

“The emergence of AI and data science, as well as billions of simultaneous computer users, is fueling skyrocketing demand on the world’s datacenters,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Addressing this demand will require holistic architectures that connect vast numbers of fast computing nodes over intelligent networking fabrics to form a giant datacenter-scale compute engine.

“We share the same vision for accelerated computing as NVIDIA,” added Eyal Waldman, founder and CEO of Mellanox. “Combining our two companies comes as a natural extension of our longstanding partnership and is a great fit given our common performance-driven cultures. This combination will foster the creation of powerful technology and fantastic opportunities for our people.”

The companies already have a long history of collaboration, with recent contributions to supercomputers Sierra and Summit, which was operated by the US Department of Energy. The acquisition is expected to be completed by the end of the year.