NXP in talks to buy $3.3bn designer of camera chips for self-driving cars
Deal would land amid consolidation wave sweeping semiconductors as they position for AI revolution
NXP Semiconductors, one of Europe’s top chipmakers, is in talks to buy Ambarella, a chip designer specialising in AI-enabled chips used in the camera technology for self-driving cars.
Talks between the two companies are ongoing but a transaction is not a foregone conclusion, according to people familiar with the matter. They cautioned other buyers could emerge or talks could collapse altogether.
Ambarella, of San Francisco, with a market value of about $3.3bn as of Friday, is part of a wave of companies specialising in designing chips for use in so-called edge AI, in which models run directly on devices instead of through the cloud.
The potential deal would be a boost to NXP’s business supplying chips for automotive makers, which is projected to account for roughly half of the group’s $15.1bn in revenue this year. Ambarella specialises in image-processing semiconductors used in security cameras and self-driving car systems.
The acquisition would land amid a wave of consolidation sweeping across the semiconductor industry as chip suppliers look to position themselves for the AI revolution. Earlier this year, Texas Instruments struck a $7.5bn deal to buy Silicon Labs, while last year Japan’s SoftBank acquired Ampere Computing for $6.5bn.
NXP, of the Netherlands, has largely eschewed doing sizeable deals of its own in recent years. The group agreed to sell itself to Qualcomm for $47bn in 2016 but the deal unravelled two years later after not obtaining Chinese regulatory approval.
Shares in Nasdaq-listed NXP are up 11 per cent so far this year, giving the group a market capitalisation of roughly $62bn as of Friday.
NXP declined to comment. Ambarella did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Bloomberg reported last year that Ambarella was exploring a sale.