Arm recently sought to acquire Alphawave for AI chip tech, sources say

Arm Holdings recently sought to acquire Alphawave, a UK-based supplier of semiconductor intellectual property, to secure a crucial technology that is crucial for building its own artificial-intelligence processors, according to three sources familiar with the matter.

Alphawave, which has a market value of 707.1 million pounds ($913.36 million), has been working with its investment bankers to explore a sale after receiving acquisition interest from Arm and other potential acquirers, one of the sources told Reuters.

Arm, however, has decided not to pursue a takeover of Alphawave after its initial discussions with the company, two of the sources said.

Arm approached Alphawave recently with the aim of acquiring its technology that determines how fast information can get onto and off a chip, which is crucial for AI because chatbots such as ChatGPT and other applications can require thousands of chips strung together at once to operate smoothly.
Known as «serdes» — short for serializer-deserializer — the tech is one of the competitive advantages Broadcom boasts, which has helped it win AI chip customers such as Alphabet's Google and OpenAI.

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SoftBank and Arm declined to comment. Alphawave declined to comment.

Alphawave has a joint venture in China called WiseWave that it operates with the Chinese investment firm Wise Road Capital, which American officials placed on a U.S. blacklist due to national security concerns last year. Arm's ties to China served to complicate its public listing in 2023, Reuters