Qualcomm (QCOM, Financial), the American chipmaker, has announced its consideration of a takeover bid for British semiconductor company Alphawave, causing Alphawave's stock to soar significantly. Alphawave, a provider of semiconductor intellectual property, has also attracted interest from SoftBank's chip technology provider, Arm Holdings (ARM). During London trading, Alphawave's shares surged 48.3% to 138.7 pence, bringing its market value to approximately £708.23 million ($913.12 million). Alphawave has yet to comment on these developments.
Previous reports indicated that Arm had considered acquiring Alphawave to gain access to its critical AI processor technology. However, after initial discussions, Arm decided not to proceed. Arm's interest focused on Alphawave's "SerDes" technology, which is crucial for AI applications as it manages data flow in and out of chips efficiently. This technology is pivotal for AI operations like ChatGPT, which requires seamless integration of numerous chips.
SerDes technology, used by companies like Broadcom (AVGO) and Marvell Technology (MRVL), is fundamental to custom chip markets predicted to reach $60 billion by 2028. NVIDIA (NVDA) has also developed similar technology and is open to licensing it.
