Qualcomm to acquire Nuvia Inc, a chip startup, to compete with Apple and Intel

According to a recent report by Reuters, Qualcomm will acquire a chip startup, Nuvia Inc for $1.4 billion to compete against Apple and Intel. The manufacturer plans to use Nuvia technology in its upcoming processors for smartphones, laptops, and vehicles.

Nuvia Inc. is an American company founded by former Apple and Google chip designers in 2019. The company builds silicon with high compute performance, power efficiency, and scalability. Their mission statement reads:

Is to reimagine silicon in a new way, and create computing platforms that redefine performance for the modern data center.

Qualcomm invests in Nuvia Inc. for leading chip performance

As per the report, the new deal will help Qualcomm establish dominance in chip performance with Nuvia’s new processor technology in server chips and other processors.

Founded by three of Apple’s former top semiconductor executives in charge of iPhone chips, Nuvia has been working on a custom CPU core design that it had said would be used in server chips.

Qualcomm, however, plans a broad use of Nuvia’s processors, saying they would power flagship smartphones, next-generation laptops, infotainment systems and driver-assistance systems among other applications.

The acquisition will also reduce Qualcomm’s dependence on Arm Ltd. which is being purchased by Nvidia Corp for $40 billion.

Most of Qualcomm’s current chips use computing cores licensed directly from Arm, while Nuvia’s cores use Arm’s underlying architecture but are custom designs. For Qualcomm, using more custom core designs – a move that Apple has also made – could lower some licensing costs to Arm in the short term and make it easier to move to a rival architecture in the longer term.

Since Qualcomm supplies PC chips to Microsoft Corp and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd. Therefore, its partner Microsoft is excited about the acquisition and the new opportunities Nuvia’s technology will bring to Windows.