Qualcomm has agreed to acquire London-based Alphawave Semi in a transaction valued at approximately $2.4 billion in enterprise value, marking a significant step in its strategy to expand beyond mobile and edge compute into the AI-driven data center market. The acquisition, announced June 9, 2025, will be carried out via Aqua Acquisition Sub LLC, an indirect wholly owned Qualcomm subsidiary. The deal is expected to close in the first calendar quarter of 2026, pending regulatory approvals, shareholder consent, and High Court sanction in the UK.
Alphawave Semi is a leader in high-speed wired connectivity and custom silicon technologies, with a deep intellectual property portfolio spanning serializer-deserializer (SerDes) IP, chiplets, and connectivity solutions. The company’s core product offerings enable ultra-fast, energy-efficient data movement in high-performance environments such as AI infrastructure, data networking, data storage, and cloud-scale data centers. Alphawave’s technologies are widely licensed and increasingly deployed by semiconductor manufacturers and hyperscale data center operators seeking to meet the bandwidth and latency demands of next-generation AI workloads.
Founded in 2017 and publicly listed on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker AWE.L, Alphawave Semi is headquartered in London, with additional R&D and design operations in Toronto, Edinburgh, and several Asian markets. The company employs over 500 people worldwide. In its latest fiscal year (2024), Alphawave reported revenues exceeding $300 million, with significant growth driven by demand for its PCIe Gen6, CXL, and UCIe IP portfolios. Under the leadership of co-founder and CEO Tony Pialis—previously VP of Analog and Mixed Signal IP at Intel and founder of V Semiconductor—Alphawave has rapidly emerged as a cutting-edge player in the connectivity silicon landscape. Major milestones in the past two years include the launch of its leading 224 Gbps SerDes IP, the industry’s first UCIe 1.1-compliant chiplet PHY, and strategic wins with hyperscalers for AI compute connectivity platforms.
For Qualcomm, the acquisition of Alphawave will help fast-track its ambitions in data center computing. The integration of Alphawave’s high-speed connectivity IP with Qualcomm’s Oryon CPUs and Hexagon NPUs positions the company to deliver high-performance, energy-efficient compute architectures optimized for AI inferencing. The deal also underscores the rising importance of chiplet-based system design and interconnect performance in scaling AI workloads, where data movement across silicon boundaries becomes a key bottleneck.
The transaction reflects Qualcomm’s broader pivot into infrastructure computing as AI adoption accelerates globally. As more enterprises and cloud providers build out custom AI inference platforms, the need for integrated compute and connectivity stacks—anchored in low-latency, high-throughput, and power-efficient designs—is growing. Qualcomm’s ability to marry its core processor IP with Alphawave’s chiplet and SerDes expertise could provide an end-to-end silicon solution for emerging workloads in AI, networking, and storage.
- Qualcomm will acquire Alphawave Semi for $2.4 billion in enterprise value
- Alphawave is headquartered in London and employs over 500 staff globally
- Alphawave develops high-speed SerDes, PCIe, CXL, and UCIe IP, as well as custom silicon and chiplets
- Recent innovations include 224 Gbps SerDes IP and UCIe 1.1-compliant PHY solutions
- Alphawave reported $300M+ in FY2024 revenue and holds multiple design wins with hyperscalers
- Qualcomm aims to combine Oryon CPUs and Hexagon NPUs with Alphawave IP for AI data center platforms
- Deal closing targeted for Q1 2026, pending regulatory and shareholder approvals
“Joining forces with Qualcomm represents a major validation of the technology foundation we’ve built over the past decade,” said Tony Pialis, president and CEO of Alphawave Semi. “Our leadership in high-speed connectivity IP, together with Qualcomm’s advanced processors, creates a powerful combination that can define the next era of intelligent infrastructure.”
