Qualcomm, the U.S. chipmaker, agreed to acquire British semiconductor company Alphawave for about $2.4 billion.

The deal offers Alphawave shareholders 183 pence per share, a 96% premium to the March 31 closing price before Qualcomm disclosed its interest.

Alphawave specializes in semiconductor technology for data centers, networking, and storage.

Qualcomm’s CEO Cristiano Amon said Alphawave’s high-speed wired connectivity and compute technologies complement Qualcomm’s power-efficient CPUs and neural processing units.

This acquisition supports Qualcomm’s announced return to the data center CPU market.

After the announcement, Alphawave shares rose more than 23%, trading just above the offer price.

Jefferies analysts expect no significant regulatory hurdles, particularly after Alphawave exited its Chinese joint venture, WiseWave.

In April, SoftBank-owned Arm showed takeover interest in Alphawave’s ‘serdes’ technology, which improves chip data processing speeds—important for AI development.

This technology underpins Broadcom’s and Marvell Technology’s custom chip businesses.

Qualcomm also presented two alternative all-share offers after extensions from the UK takeover panel.

Alphawave plans to unanimously recommend Qualcomm’s cash offer to shareholders, considering it fair and reasonable.

PHOTO: REUTERS/ALY SONG

This article was created with AI assistance.