Qualcomm’s Alphawave Acquisition Targets Data Centers and AI, But What’s Next?

By Majeed Kamran, EETimes | June 9, 2025

Semiconductor IP is becoming critical in the chip industry ecosystem, and Qualcomm’s $2.4 billion acquisition of Alphawave Semi is the latest reminder of this shift in which large IC vendors are acquiring specialized IP rather than developing it internally. The acquisition also affirms Qualcomm’s quest to diversify beyond mobile processors. 

Alphawave’s serializer-deserializer (SerDes) technology—enabling high-speed data transfer crucial for AI applications—could help Qualcomm develop chips capable of handling the massive data transfer requirements of modern AI workloads. Unlike traditional analog SerDes architectures, Alphawave’s DSP-based approach for building SerDes scales data rates to higher speeds and manufacturing processes to smaller geometries. 

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