Industry Expert Blogs

Network-on-a-chip IP company Arteris recently announced it has been acquired by Qualcomm. So that means the end of the Arteris brand and the ability to license the technology, right? Wrong. Interestingly enough, Qualcomm acquired the technology and the engineering team, but is letting Arteris continue licensing the technology to anyone, including Qualcomm’s competition. About a third of the company will continue to work for Arteris, and two-thirds will become Qualcomm employees.

Time will tell if Qualcomm’s competitors continue to adopt the Arteris IP or shift to a new bus fabric. Either way, the deal is good news for the sales, marketing, and support teams at Arteris today, since their jobs would most likely have been in jeopardy at Qualcomm. Theoretically, Arteris could even build up a new engineering team and continue developing its on-chip networking technology. And it’s good news for Qualcomm, who has gained control over the current technology and IP rights for a price that’s likely lower than what it would have paid to absorb the whole company. And it’s good news for Sonics, Arteris’ main competition. Arteris had been trouncing the company on quite a few accounts, but now it can play a powerful new card: “Do you want to rely on IP that’s under your competitor’s control?”

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