Jul. 30, 2025 –
The first half of 2025 marked the close of one of the biggest acquisitions in the global electronics industry: Synopsys’ $35 billion purchase of Ansys. While the deal grabbed headlines, Synopsys’ ambitions in the EDA market run deeper.
At the Synopsys User Group (SNUG) conference in Bangalore, company leaders spoke about how AI is reshaping chip design, how modular architectures are becoming the norm, and how India is emerging as both a talent base and a key market.
Shankar Krishnamoorthy, product development officer at Synopsys, described the company’s positioning across what he called “two markets.”
The first includes customers building AI chips, such as companies like Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and AMD. The second involves how Synopsys is applying AI across its own tools.
“The first group needs more automation, more IP, and stronger hardware validation. That part of our business is growing quickly,” Krishnamoorthy said. “And we’re also seeing good traction from the second, where we’ve built AI into our portfolio to help customers improve workflows.”
Inside Synopsys, teams are already using AI-assisted tools to speed up verification and documentation. “About 10–15 percent of our code is now written with the help of AI, but it goes through strict checks,” he said. “This isn’t about replacing engineers—it’s about keeping up with demand and growing complexity.”
Each major Synopsys tool now includes a built-in assistant to help engineers get started faster. “It brings down the learning curve and helps new users become productive quickly,” Krishnamoorthy added.
He also addressed concerns about engineers losing control of their workflows. “We’re careful about how we introduce these assistants,” he said. “Engineers are still very much in charge. The idea is to support them, not sideline them.”
To reduce errors, Synopsys is using models that can reason through tasks and check their work. “These models break big requests into smaller steps and run checks along the way. That gives much more reliable results,” he said.