AMD and Xilinx: A Match Made in Silicon Valley?

By Kevin Krewell, EETimes (October 12, 2020)

Once again, the chip company acquisition rumors are back! In this acquisition rumor AMD is in negotiations to buy Xilinx. And, again, this story comes from the Wall Street Journal, just as the rumor of NVIDIA buying Arm was, the veracity of which was later substantiated. The reason why these speculative reports come from the Wall Street Journal is that it is well connected with the investment banking community, which gets involved in these types of large acquisition deals. That said, AMD acquiring Xilinx is something that really seems to have come out of left field to us.

First, it was not known AMD was in acquisition mode and certainly not for a company as large as Xilinx and not for so much money. The deal to buy Xilinx is rumored to cost AMD $30 billion, which is almost a third of its market capitalization.

On top of that, Xilinx was not known to be ready to be acquired, as their new CEO was in the midst of transforming the business with the Versal products and extending their drive into the data center, AI, and telecom markets.

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