AWS signs multi-year chip-design licensing pact with Synopsys valued over $1 billion

Amazon Web Services announced a multi-year licensing arrangement with Synopsys, valued at over $1 billion, to obtain chip-design intellectual property. Synopsys, known for its software that helps companies like Nvidia and Intel map billions of transistors onto silicon, has been growing a licensing segment that generated $1.75 billion in its latest fiscal year, competing with Arm Holdings. While the partnership originally focused on standard chip blocks, Synopsys now offers more sophisticated designs, including computing cores, which will be the focus of this deal.

AWS, which creates its own processors such as Graviton and Trainium, did not specify which products will incorporate Synopsys blueprints. In addition, Synopsys will migrate to AWS computing and storage platforms and will leverage Amazon Bedrock to build and run AI applications.