Applied Materials acquires IP startup Think Silicon

[pasdak]

Big news for us here in Greece, as Applied Materials bought local IP startup Think Silicon for ~30 million USD. Think Silicon specializes in low-power GPU designs, aimed primarily at wearable devices.

US firm buys out domestic tech startup | eKathimerini.com

Patra-based startup Think Silicon has been bought out by Nasdaq-listed Applied Materials, in what is Greece’s biggest acquisition in the deep-tech sector.

www.ekathimerini.com

Transaction amount might seem peanuts in the greater context of the global EDA industry, but it's definitely great news for our tiny domestic semiconductor industry especially given the ongoing coronavirus sitation.

Great news nevertheless, to me this seems quite a strange acquisition. Why would a fab equipment manufacturer (as Applied Materials seems to primarily be) buy an IP company? Wouldn't ARM, NVidia, Qualcomm or any other large IP or Fabless company be a more "natural" acquisition path? Would love to hear any business rationale views from more seasoned members of this forum

 

[Arthur Hanson]

Interesting question, it will be interesting to see if they talk about this at their investor conference call shortly.

 

[csay]

Pretty curious about this myself. Would be interested to hear what others think.

 

[Daniel Nenni]

Applied Materials also bought Sage DA https://www.sage-da.com/about-us.html so they are definitely up to something. I worked for Sage a while back. Let me ask around and see what's up.