Qualcomm announced the acquisition of Modular, a Silicon Valley chip startup, for nearly $4 billion. The deal includes up to 19.2 million shares of common stock, valued at just under $4 billion based on Qualcomm's last closing share price. Modular's employees will receive $300 million in compensation as part of the transaction. The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of this year. Modular develops a chip software platform and a proprietary coding language that enables developers to write AI software compatible with multiple chips without rewriting code for each platform. The company's entire team, including its two founders and around 150 employees, is expected to join Qualcomm.
Qualcomm president and CEO Cristiano Amon stated, 'We believe the future belongs to developer-friendly, horizontal platforms that can run across diverse compute environments and give customers real choice in how and where they deploy AI.' The acquisition marks Qualcomm's expansion beyond the mobile device market, which generates most of its revenue. Amon mentioned the company is working on 40 different chip designs for AI gadgets, including smart glasses, jewelry, earbuds, pins, and watches. Qualcomm has also been focusing on the data center market, which requires more powerful chips.
Modular was founded in 2022 by Chris Lattner and Tim Davis, who previously worked on Google’s TPU chips. Lattner is known for creating the LLVM compiler infrastructure and Apple’s Swift programming language. He also briefly led Tesla’s Autopilot software program. Lattner and Davis aimed to create a unifying software layer to help cloud businesses maximize GPU and CPU performance, challenging Nvidia’s CUDA and AMD’s ROCm. Modular eventually secured partnerships with major chipmakers and hyperscalers while competing with them.
Source: wired
