In an effort to improve its artificial intelligence technology capabilities, Qualcomm Inc. has agreed to pay roughly $2.4 billion in cash to purchase Alphawave IP Group Plc, a semiconductor company listed in the UK.
Qualcomm claims that Alphawave is valued at approximately 183 pence per share in the bid.
Alternatively, for every Alphawave share that owners own, they can opt to get 0.01662 Qualcomm shares.
Alphawave's board has approved the transaction with unanimous consent.
High-speed semiconductor and connectivity solutions for data centers and AI systems are Alphawave's areas of expertise. These are important growth areas in the chip market driven by rising demand from AI tools like OpenAI's ChatGPT. Alphawave has continuously traded below its 2021 IPO price of 410 pence per share.
Talks between the two companies have been going on ever since Qualcomm initially showed interest in April. Just prior to the public announcement of the negotiations, on March 31, Alphawave's stock was trading at 93.50 pence. Last Friday, it increased 2.9 percent to 149.20 pence.
The technology developed by Alphawave, which designs and licenses semiconductor technology for data centers, networking, and storage, attracted acquisition interest in early April from Qualcomm and SoftBank-owned chip tech supplier Arm.
The technology is the basis for Broadcom's and Marvell Technology's multibillion-dollar bespoke chip businesses and supports the speed at which processors process data, which is essential for the development of AI.
Following many extensions from the UK takeover panel to present a definitive offer, Qualcomm additionally presented Alphawave's shareholders with two alternative all-share bids.
The British business stated that it plans to unanimously endorse the cash offer to its shareholders because it believes its terms are fair and reasonable.
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The sale of Alphawave's portion in WiseWave, its joint venture with the Chinese investment firm Wise Road Capital, to current state shareholders was also finalized.