The Mellanox playbook: acquire best-in-class adjacent tech (~$6.9B, April 2020), integrate quietly, surface years later. Networking reached $31B full-year revenue — 10x acquisition-era — but stayed buried in consolidated numbers for four years despite 14% Q1 contribution. The narration lag is the pattern signal. Since then: three modalities — full acquisition, licensing-plus-team, equity-plus-commitments — each calibrated to how much of the target the platform needs to own. Watch integrations, not announcements; announcements come years late by design.