Nvidia today unveiled its plans to acquire Cumulus Networks for an undisclosed sum in a bid to bolster the chipmaker's presence in the networking space. Combined with Mellanox, which Nvidia bought last year for more than $6.9 billion, the chipmaker says Cumulus' open networking platform will help to accelerate the development and adoption of the software-defined data center. "The Cumulus acquisition, along with Mellanox, strengthens our position to reshape the modern data center to handle the exponential growth in AI [artificial intelligence] and [high-performance computing]," an Nvidia spokesperson wrote in an email to SDxCentral. "Cumulus' networking software expertise augments Nvidia's strategy of innovating across the entire stack, from silicon to systems to software, to deliver unique value to customers." Nvidia claims that with Cumulus it will be able to innovate across the entire networking stack from chips and systems to software.