"EDA Century's major acquisition" is about to be finalized? UK antitrust authorities accepting remedial measures from Synopsys, Inc.

In the field of chip design, the leader - EDA software giant Synopsys, Inc. (SNPS.US) stated on Wednesday local time that the company is satisfied with the temporary acceptance of its proposed "anti-monopoly remedies" by the UK antitrust agency, which involves the company's pending acquisition of Ansys (ANSS.US) for $35 billion. Synopsys, Inc.'s proposed large-scale acquisition of Ansys has been dubbed the "biggest acquisition of the century" in the EDA software field. If Synopsys, Inc. successfully acquires Ansys, it will significantly strengthen Synopsys, Inc.'s leading position in the EDA software field, and push its market share far ahead of its biggest competitor, Cadence Design Systems (CDNS.US). "We are pleased that today the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has taken a significant step in temporarily accepting the anti-monopoly remedies we proposed in the first phase, rather than moving the transaction into the second phase of anti-monopoly proceedings," Synopsys, Inc. stated in a release. "As CMA completes its process, we will continue to maintain constructive and collaborative contact with CMA. Customers are also expected to continue to express their overwhelming support for this transaction." Synopsys, Inc. added that the major transaction is expected to be completed in the first half of 2025. Additionally, on the same Wednesday, CMA stated that there were "sufficiently reasonable grounds" to believe that the remedies proposed by both parties under the Enterprise Act 2002 might ultimately be accepted by the agency. Previously in December, CMA expressed concerns that the transaction might lead to a reduction in competition in the UK market. However, the agency also stated that if its concerns were alleviated, it might quickly approve the transaction. As part of the proposed remedies to address anti-monopoly concerns about the transaction, Synopsys, Inc. previously stated that it would sell its optical solutions business to Keysight Technologies. It also proposed to sell Ansys' PowerArtist business unit. In January 2024, Synopsys, Inc. announced that it had agreed to acquire Ansys, a leader in simulation software, for approximately $35 billion in cash and stock. Under the terms of the deal, Ansys shareholders would receive up to $197 per share in cash and 0.3450 shares of Synopsys, Inc. common stock. Synopsys, Inc. has already established a leading position in the EDA software field, providing a wide range of chip design software and tools. EDA software is an essential tool for designing chips, earning the nickname "mother of chips." Ansys primarily provides simulation software, especially in engineering fields such as structural, fluid dynamics, and electromagnetic simulation. In the eyes of chip design experts, by acquiring Ansys, Synopsys, Inc. can further enhance its technological capabilities in chip design simulation, especially in systems-level simulation and integrated simulation tools. This would provide a more comprehensive product portfolio to help chip design major customers such as NVIDIA Corporation, AMD, and Broadcom Inc. conduct full-process simulations more effectively, with simulation being a core technology aspect of the entire chip design process. Therefore, Synopsys, Inc.'s integration of Ansys' simulation technology through acquisition is expected to better address the design requirements of next-generation semiconductor products, particularly in areas such as 6G technology, AI chips, and quantum computing chips, which pose extremely complex design demands. As chip design leaders such as NVIDIA Corporation, AMD, Apple Inc., and cloud computing giants like Amazon.com, Inc., Microsoft Corporation, accelerate the development of high-performance AI chips, their demand for EDA software from Synopsys, Inc., which can design more complex AI chip architectures and accelerate chip design with new AI technologies, continues to grow. Chip design companies such as NVIDIA Corporation and AMD need more powerful EDA software tools to meet the complex requirements of AI chip design. As AI chip architectures need to rapidly upgrade to keep up with exponential growth in computational power demand, these chip design giants are increasing their purchases of EDA tools to accelerate research and development. Additionally, tech giants like Microsoft Corporation, Amazon.com, Inc., and Meta are also intensifying efforts to introduce proprietary server CPUs and high-performance AI chips for data centers, prompting them to increase their purchases of EDA software tools.