Two and a half years after declining a takeover bid from Autodesk, the EDA developer made a deal with a chipmaker.
On February 15, Japanese semiconductor manufacturer Renesas announced its plan to acquire Australian electronic design automation (EDA) software developer Altium. The $5.91 billion (A$9.1 billion) deal gives Renesas, long a chipmaker for Toyota and Nissan, among others, the means to diversify and create solutions for the aerospace, defense and telecommunications industries.
“Addition of Altium will enable us to deliver an integrated and open development platform, making it easier for businesses of all sizes and industries to build and scale their systems,” said Hidetoshi Shibata, CEO of Renesas, in the company’s press release.
The $5.91 billion purchase will be funded through bank loans and cash. It is expected to take place in the second half of 2024, after approval by Altium shareholders and the Australian court, regulatory approvals, and the satisfaction of other typical closing conditions. The deal was unanimously approved by both the boards of directors of Renesas and Altium.
In a Zoom webinar on the deal, Shibata said Altium has over 61,000 global subscriptions and achieved a 20% growth year-to-year in recent years. He noted Altium currently has over 850 employees. Altium will continue to function independently as a consolidated subsidiary of Renesas. Altium’s current CEO, Aram Mirkazemi, will continue to lead the Altium team.
There have been signs of coming change for a few years. In 2021, Altium declined a $3.9 billion bid from Autodesk. At Renesas, one clue of the acquisition plan was Renesas’ announcement of a company-wide restructure and the formation of a new group for software in October 2023.
Another sign of the impending acquisition was Renesas’ two-year partnership with Altium, which began in 2022. In June 2023, Renesas announced that it standardized development for all printed circuit board (PCB) design on Altium 365, Altium’s cloud-based project storage management platform. Last year, Renesas also shared that it published all of its products’ electronic computer-aided design (ECAD) libraries to the Altium Public Vault, Altium’s open server-based engineering content management system. This step allowed customers to use features like “manufacturer part search” on Altium 365 to choose Renesas parts from the Altium library.
PCB engineers who work with Altium’s flagship product, Altium Designer, can expect Renesas to further integrate Altium’s cloud platform capabilities with Renesas’ embedded systems. Renesas’ press release on the acquisition indicates Renesas will integrate and standardize “various electronic design data and functions.”
Altium’s most recent feature launch was on January 11, a bill of materials (BOM) Portal in Altium 365. The BOM Portal is a dashboard that aims to make it easier for engineering and procurement teams to work together to monitor BOMs in production. This tool offers insights into parts supply issues with real-time component information from Octopart, S&P Global and SiliconExpert.
Going forward, PCB engineers using Altium software can expect to see Renesas offer more tools to improve engineers’ user experience. Renesas’ announcement caused Altium shares to rise by as much as 33% and Renesas shares to decline by 2.5%. Renesas is encouraging Altium shareholders to approve the purchase. Renesas said the acquisition will provide shareholders significant value and speed Renesas’ digitalization strategy.
