Mellanox established the pattern: ~$6.9B (April 2020) for best-in-class adjacent tech, integrated operationally in Q1 at 14% of revenue, but narrated as a separate line only four years later once networking hit $31B full-year — 10x the acquisition-era level. The narration lag is the signal. Since then, three modalities — full acquisition, licensing-plus-team, equity-plus-commitments — each calibrated to how much of the target the platform actually needs to own. The integrations arrive quietly; the announcements come years late by design.
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