Bengaluru-based semiconductor design company Tessolve, a unit of Hero Electronix, Wednesday said it has entered into a deal to acquire a Germany-based chip design firm, as it looks to expand its operations in Europe.
The company, in which Singapore private equity firm Novo Tellus Capital invested $40 million (Rs 337 crore) in 2021, will buy Dream Chip Technologies for Rs 400 crore, marking its eighth acquisition to date as per VCCEdge data. The deal is subject to regulatory approval, Tessolve said.
The acquisition will strengthen Tessolve's position in system-on-a-chip (SoC) designs for the artificial intelligence (AI), automotive, data center, and industrial markets, while also expanding its European operations by adding four delivery locations across Germany and Netherlands, the company said.
SoC is an integrated circuit that takes a single platform and merges an entire electronics and computer components on to it.
The new facilities will include a specialized advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and imaging lab, it added.
“Dream Chip’s capabilities further strengthen our ability to take on leading edge ASIC (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits) design projects and greatly enhances our European footprint,” said Srini Chinamilli, co-founder and CEO, Tessolve.
Dream Chip Chief Executive Jens Benndorf said the deal will strengthen Tessolve's position in automotive and enterprise designs, particularly in camera-based systems and AI-driven ASIC applications.
The company was founded in 1990 by the government of Lower Saxony, Germany and was acquired twice - by Infineon Technologies in 2000 and US-based Silicon Image in 2006. The firm's management received a buyout in 2010, following which Dream Chip was established.
It specializes in the development and design of ASICs, SoCs, field programmable gate array (FPGAs), embedded software, and discrete systems.
Tessolve was founded in 2005 by Raja Manickam in Bengaluru. Hero Electronix purchased a majority stake in the company in 2016. The semiconductor designer says it crossed Rs 1,000 crore in revenue this year.