The playbook's founding case: Mellanox at ~$6.9B (April 2020), absorbed operationally in Q1 at 14% of revenue, but narrated as a separate line only after four years and $31B full-year networking — 10x the acquisition baseline. The lag is the signal: the platform integrates quietly, surfaces capabilities at scale. 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. Announcements trail integrations by years, by design.