Alphawave Semi is in Play!

We started working with Alphawave at the end of 2020 with a CEO Interview. I had met Tony Pialis before and found him to be a brilliant and charismatic leader so I knew it would be a great collaboration. Tony was already an IP legend after his company was acquired by Intel. After 4+ years at Intel Tony co-founded Alphawave in 2017. Today, Alphawave Semi is a global leader in high-speed connectivity and compute silicon for the world’s technology infrastructure. They are a publicly on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) with a recent stock price spike for obvious reasons. I have nothing but great things to say about Alphawave, absolutely.

When I first read about the exclusive OEM deal between Siemens and Alphawave I immediately thought: Why was this not an acquisition?

Siemens to accelerate customer time to market with advanced silicon IP through new Alphawave Semi partnership

“Siemens Digital Industries Software is a key and trusted partner for AI and hyperscaler developers, and our agreement simplifies and speeds the process of developing SoCs for these, and other leading-edge technologies, to incorporate Alphawave Semi’s IP,” said Tony Pialis, president and CEO, Alphawave Semi. “Our technologies play a critical role in reducing interconnect bottlenecks and this collaboration greatly expands our customer reach, allowing more companies to deliver next-level data processing.”

Ever since Siemens acquired Mentor Graphics in 2017 for $4.5B they have implemented an aggressive acquisition strategy acquiring dozens of companies. We track them on the EDA Merger and Acquisition Wiki. During the day I help emerging companies with exits so I have M&A experience with the big EDA companies including Siemens. They all do it differently but I can tell you the Siemens M&A team is VERY good and they do not take being out bid lightly. I was with Solido Design and Fractal when they were acquired by Siemens and I was with Tanner EDA and Berkely Design when they were acquired by Mentor Graphics. It was a night versus day difference for the M&A processes.

The only answer I came up with as to why it was on OEM agreement versus an outright acquisition was price, Tony wanted more money. Purely speculation on my part but now that I have read that both Qualcomm and Arm might be interested in acquiring Alphawave it is more than speculation.

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