Qualcomm to Acquire Alphawave Semi for $2.4B in Data Center Push
On Monday, Qualcomm announced that it is acquiring Alphawave Semi (formally Alphawave IP Group plc) for $2.4 billion, or 183 pence per share. According to Qualcomm’s announcement, the move will “further accelerate, and provide key assets for, Qualcomm’s expansion into data centers” by complementing the company’s Qualcomm Oryon central processing unit and Hexagon neural processing unit.
Alphawave Semi was founded in 2017. The company became known for its high-performance connectivity and compute solutions, including customizable chiplets, which we discussed with Vice President of Product Marketing and Management Letizia Giuliano in an interview last fall:
“There is no one solution, no one size fits at all,” she said. “All our customers and our systems we're building today need to be tailored to the particular workload, the particular place in the data center they are, and that transfers to the hardware that we are designing.”
Qualcomm cited the value of custom silicon as part of its announcement. “Alphawave Semi has developed leading high-speed wired connectivity and compute technologies that are complementary to our power-efficient CPU and NPU cores,” said Cristiano Amon, president and CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated. “Qualcomm’s advanced custom processors are a natural fit for data center workloads. The combined teams share the goal of building advanced technology solutions and enabling next-level connected computing performance across a wide array of high growth areas, including data center infrastructure.”
The deal is subject to standard regulatory approvals and is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2026.
The TechArena Take – The Feeding Frenzy Begins
Monday’s news comes hot on the heels of last week’s announcement that AMD is acquiring the engineering staff of Untether AI. With two acquisitions of smaller industry players in such a short time, we at TechArena are asking if this is the start of an AI silicon acquisition feeding frenzy in the tech waters.
When Alphawave Semi went public on the London Stock Exchange in May 2021, it was for a value of £3.1 billion (410 pence per share). Its sales price to Qualcomm is less than half that, and that’s after a significant bump in valuation after word of Qualcomm’s interest leaked in April. With sky-rocketing demand and international uncertainty caused by US-led tariff wars, it’s clearly a challenging time to be a smaller player in the industry. Qualcomm itself is looking to boost its offerings to break into data centers and earn a greater share of the growing market for AI silicon as it competes against industry powerhouses like NVIDIA and AMD.
We’ll be watching closely for more signs of consolidation in the industry as an already wild year continues to unfold.
On Monday, Qualcomm announced that it is acquiring Alphawave Semi (formally Alphawave IP Group plc) for $2.4 billion, or 183 pence per share. According to Qualcomm’s announcement, the move will “further accelerate, and provide key assets for, Qualcomm’s expansion into data centers” by complementing the company’s Qualcomm Oryon central processing unit and Hexagon neural processing unit.
Alphawave Semi was founded in 2017. The company became known for its high-performance connectivity and compute solutions, including customizable chiplets, which we discussed with Vice President of Product Marketing and Management Letizia Giuliano in an interview last fall:
“There is no one solution, no one size fits at all,” she said. “All our customers and our systems we're building today need to be tailored to the particular workload, the particular place in the data center they are, and that transfers to the hardware that we are designing.”
Qualcomm cited the value of custom silicon as part of its announcement. “Alphawave Semi has developed leading high-speed wired connectivity and compute technologies that are complementary to our power-efficient CPU and NPU cores,” said Cristiano Amon, president and CEO of Qualcomm Incorporated. “Qualcomm’s advanced custom processors are a natural fit for data center workloads. The combined teams share the goal of building advanced technology solutions and enabling next-level connected computing performance across a wide array of high growth areas, including data center infrastructure.”
The deal is subject to standard regulatory approvals and is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2026.
The TechArena Take – The Feeding Frenzy Begins
Monday’s news comes hot on the heels of last week’s announcement that AMD is acquiring the engineering staff of Untether AI. With two acquisitions of smaller industry players in such a short time, we at TechArena are asking if this is the start of an AI silicon acquisition feeding frenzy in the tech waters.
When Alphawave Semi went public on the London Stock Exchange in May 2021, it was for a value of £3.1 billion (410 pence per share). Its sales price to Qualcomm is less than half that, and that’s after a significant bump in valuation after word of Qualcomm’s interest leaked in April. With sky-rocketing demand and international uncertainty caused by US-led tariff wars, it’s clearly a challenging time to be a smaller player in the industry. Qualcomm itself is looking to boost its offerings to break into data centers and earn a greater share of the growing market for AI silicon as it competes against industry powerhouses like NVIDIA and AMD.
We’ll be watching closely for more signs of consolidation in the industry as an already wild year continues to unfold.
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