Qualcomm acquires UK chip designer Alphawave for $2.4B
What's the story
American tech giant Qualcomm has announced its acquisition of British semiconductor company Alphawave IP Group Plc for a whopping $2.4 billion.
The deal, which translates to around 183 pence per share, involves technology applicable to AI, which is a growth area in the industry.
The Alphawave board has unanimously recommended the deal to shareholders after months of negotiations and discussions between the two companies.
The deal is expected to close in Q1 2026 pending shareholder approval.
Tech focus
About Alphawave
Alphawave specializes in high-speed semiconductor and connectivity technology for data centers and AI applications.
These are two major growth areas in the chip industry, driven by increasing demand for AI and data center technologies.
Despite going public at 410 pence per share in 2021, Alphawave has mostly traded below this level.
Under the terms of this deal, Alphawave shareholders will also have the option to exchange their stock for 0.01662 of a new share in Qualcomm.
Strategic move
Technologies complement Qualcomm's power-efficient CPU and NPU cores
Qualcomm's CEO Cristiano Amon said that Alphawave has developed "leading high-speed wired connectivity and compute technologies" that complement his company's power-efficient central processing unit (CPU) and neural processing unit (NPU) cores.
He added, "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 datacenter infrastructure."