Since the 6 month 9 According to a report today, the US chip giant Qualcomm announced a major news that it has agreed to acquire British semiconductor listed company Alphawave at a transaction price of about US$2.4 billion (at the current exchange rate, approximately RMB 17.2 billion). The transaction is huge and has attracted widespread attention in the semiconductor industry. The transaction currently needs to be approved by regulators and is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2026. If the acquisition is successfully completed, Alphawave will delist from the securities market and switch to a privatized operation under Qualcomm Group.
Alphawave was founded in Canada in 2017. Although it is a young company, it has made its mark in the semiconductor field. It focuses on authorized high-speed connectivity chip design, and its product application range is extremely wide, covering many popular and key areas such as data centers, artificial intelligence (AI), 5G wireless infrastructure, data networks, autonomous driving, solid-state storage, etc. In terms of revenue, Alphawave performed well in 2024, with revenue exceeding $500 million. Moreover, its team size is growing, with about 1,000 employees in Canada, India, the United States, Israel and other places.
In 2021, Alphawave chose to list in London, UK, and its market value reached 3.1 billion pounds at the beginning of its listing, demonstrating the high recognition of its potential by the capital market. However, Qualcomm's acquisition offer this time is less than half of the market value of Alphawave when it first went public. Despite this, Alphawave's stock price showed a sharp rise in early Monday, up 23%. This price fluctuation reflects the market's positive attitude towards the acquisition, which believes that the deal may bring new development opportunities to Alphawave.
In fact, as early as April this year, Qualcomm issued its first announcement to announce the possibility of acquiring Alphawave, which had already caused waves in the industry. Qualcomm President and CEO Ammon said that Qualcomm and Alphawave have the same goals, both committed to building advanced technology solutions and are looking to achieve higher levels of interconnected computing performance in a wide range of high-growth areas such as data center infrastructure. Alphawave CEO Tony Pialis also believes that the transaction will put Alphawave in a favorable position, not only expanding its product range and covering a wider customer base, but also enhancing its technological R&D capabilities and helping the company further develop.
In terms of the terms of the acquisition, Alphawave shareholders have a certain option to accept the offer in cash or Qualcomm stock. If cash is chosen, Alphawave shareholders who accept the acquisition will be entitled to $2.48 cash per share, a price of nearly 96% premium compared to the closing price before Qualcomm disclosed its acquisition intention. If you choose the stock form, shareholders can choose to exchange 0.01662 new shares of Qualcomm shares per share. In addition, each Alphawave stock is also exchangeable for 0.00964 shares of new “Series A Qualcomm Exchangeable Securities” and 0.00698 shares of new “Series B Qualcomm Exchangeable Securities”. However, the exchangeable securities are not listed and non-transferable during the 4-year lock-up period and will be gradually converted into Qualcomm shares within 16 quarterly issuance days.
At present, technology giants are investing huge amounts of money in the field of AI infrastructure to build related facilities. Against this background, Qualcomm's acquisition of Alphawave is of great significance. Through this acquisition, combining Alphawave's connectivity and computing technology with Qualcomm's existing product matrix is expected to significantly expand Qualcomm's product strength in the fields of data centers and 5G networks. This will not only enrich Qualcomm's product variety and improve product performance, but will also strongly support Qualcomm's development ambitions in the AI field, making it occupy a more advantageous position in the highly competitive AI market.
