Qualcomm buys chip design startup Nuvia for $1.4 bn

San Francisco, Jan 14 : Chip maker Qualcomm has acquired Nuvia, formed in 2019 by three former Apple engineers including one of Indian origin, for a whopping $1.4 billion for the 5G era.

As part of the transaction, Nuvia founders Gerard Williams, Manu Gulati and John Bruno and their employees will join Qualcomm, the company said in a statement on Wednesday."Together, we are very well positioned to redefine computing and enable our ecosystem of partners to drive innovation and deliver a new class of products and experiences for the 5G era," said Cristiano Amon, President and CEO-Elect, Qualcomm Incorporated.

Nuvia comprises a proven world-class CPU and technology design team, with industry-leading expertise in high performance processors, Systems on a Chip (SoC) and power management for compute-intensive devices and applications.The addition of Nuvia CPUs to Qualcomm Technologies already leading mobile graphics processing unit (GPU), AI engine, DSP and dedicated multimedia accelerators will further extend the leadership of Qualcomm Snapdragon platforms.

"CPU performance leadership will be critical in defining and delivering on the next era of computing innovation," said Gerard Williams, CEO of Nuvia."The combination of NUVIA and Qualcomm will bring the industrys best engineering talent, technology and resources together to create a new class of high-performance computing platforms that set the bar for our industry.

We couldnt be more excited for the opportunities ahead."Microsoft said that it is exciting to see Nuvia join the Qualcomm team.

"Our partnership with Qualcomm has always been about providing great experiences on our products.Moving forward, we have an incredible opportunity to empower our customers across the Windows ecosystem," said Panos Panay, Chief Product Officer, Microsoft.

Hiroshi Lockheimer, SVP Platforms & Ecosystems, Google, added: "The addition of Nuvia extends Qualcomms capabilities in these three areas and were excited to see the next generation of Snapdragon with Nuvia.