Mellanox was founded in May 1999 by former Israeli executives of Intel Corporation and Galileo Technology (which was acquired by Marvell Technology Group in October 2000 for $2.8 billion)[7] Eyal Waldman, Shai Cohen, Roni Ashuri, Michael Kagan, Evelyn Landman, Eitan Zahavi, Shimon Rottenberg, Udi Katz and Alon Webman.

[14] Initially founded as an integrated circuit (chip) manufacturer, it evolved into a producer of complete network systems by 2009.

[20] In July 2013, Mellanox acquired privately held Kotura, Inc., a developer of silicon photonics optical interconnect technology for high-speed networking.

[21] In July 2013, Mellanox acquired privately held IPtronics A/S, a designer of optical interconnect components for digital communications.

[22] In July 2014, Mellanox acquired privately held Integrity Project, for its software connectivity, low-level development, real-time applications and security technology.

[26] In January 2018, Starboard criticized the company's research and development spending and argued for short-term profits instead.

[40] Mellanox Technologies provided Ethernet and InfiniBand network adapters, switches and cables for servers and storage used in cloud and enterprise data centers based on internally developed integrated circuits.

[48] Although originally associated with InfiniBand products, Mellanox was later able to use its technology for storage area networks (SANs), to replace legacy Fibre Channel for example with the much more common Ethernet family of standards, since 2011.

[49][40] In addition to its headquarters in the US, Mellanox had offices in Israel, Denmark, China, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan and the United Kingdom.

[51] In 2018, Waldman told a Tel Aviv conference hosted by Globes magazine that over 100 Palestinians are working on Mellanox projects.

[52] Waldman had previously talked about Mellanox's plans to build a research and development center in Ramallah, even though it is more expensive than outsourcing to Eastern Europe.