Qualcomm announced that it is acquiring server chip designer Nuvia for approximately $1.4 billion. Qualcomm said the acquisition of Nuvia's CPU and technology design team will help the company "meet the demands of next-generation 5G computing", as it is a new step in Qualcomm's efforts to expand beyond the mobile phone market and challenge Intel's lead in the semiconductor market.
Building on its Snapdragon processor, Qualcomm will integrate Nuvia's CPUs across its entire portfolio of products, including smartphone chips and next-generation laptop processors, as well as Advanced Driver Assistance Systems and infrastructure networking systems. Nuvia founders Gerard Williams, Manu Gulati and John Bruno, and their employees will join Qualcomm once the takeover is completed.
In its press release announcing the deal, Qualcomm provided a list of executive quotes from its partners, all applauding the combination of the two companies. Those included come from Panos Panay, chief product officer of Microsoft; Hiroshi Lockheimer, senior vice president of platforms and ecosystems at Google; TM Roh, president and head of mobile communications at Samsung; Xiaomi CEO Lei Jun and executives from Bosch, Continental, General Motors, HMD, Honor, HP, Lenovo, LG, OnePlus, Oppo, Panasonic, Vivo, Renault, Sharp and Vivo.
“Compute performance, connectivity and power efficiency are critical ingredients that make the billions of Android and Chrome OS devices shine,” Google's Lockheimer said. “The addition of Nuvia extends Qualcomm's capabilities in these three areas, and we're excited to see the next generation of Snapdragon with Nuvia.”
