Computer chip maker NVIDIA has made a US$2 billion (A$3.06 billion) investment in chip design software maker Synopsys as part of an expansion of their long-term strategic partnership.
The two companies said the partnership would help research and development (R&D) teams to design, simulate and verify intelligent products with greater precision and speed and at a lower cost.
NVIDIA made the investment in Synopsys at $414.79 per share, a discount to the closing price on Monday (Tuesday AEDT) of $438.29 after the share price rose $20.28 or 4.85% on the day.
“This is a huge deal,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street” program.
They said R&D teams in industries ranging from semiconductors to aerospace, automotive and industrial faced significant engineering challenges, including increasing workflow complexity, escalating development costs and time-to-market pressure
Huang said in a media release that the partnership harnessed the power of NVIDIA accelerated computing and artificial intelligence (AI) to “reimagine engineering and design — empowering engineers to invent the extraordinary products that will shape our future."
“No two companies are better positioned to deliver AI-powered, holistic system design solutions than Synopsys and NVIDIA," Synopsys President and CEO Sassine Ghazi said in the release.
This is the latest in a series of investments made by Nvidia in the booming AI market, including those in OpenAI, Anthropic and Intel.
Nvidia shares rose $2.94 (1.66%) to finish at $179.92, capitalising the world’s most valuable company at $4.27 trillion.
The aim of the deal is to encourage high-technology industries to switch to graphics processing unit chips sold by Nvidia from the central processing units used in the past as they adopt AI.
Synopsys makes the software and tools that engineers use to design and test computer chips.
