Ansenmei acquires Qorvo's silicon carbide business, and the silicon carbide industry is about to enter an integration trend?

In recent years, Qorvo has launched many outstanding new products in the field of silicon carbide, with applications ranging from data centers to electric vehicles. Qorvo's financial report for the first quarter of this year also showed that SiC power device products have received millions of dollars in orders from AI servers and data center applications. So why did Qorvo give up its SiC business, and what can be gained from Anson's acquisition?
Qorvo has only been in the SiC market for three years and has previously revealed or abandoned its SiC business
In November 2021, Qorvo announced the acquisition of silicon carbide power device manufacturer UnitedSiC. James Klein, the then president of Qorvo's infrastructure and defense products business, stated that Qorvo will use its own channels and customer relationships to expand UnitedSiC's sales scope, while also expanding silicon carbide devices from traditional server and industrial power markets to infrastructure such as new energy vehicles, charging stations, and renewable resources.
UnitedSiC was founded in 1999, originating from a research team at Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA. In 2009, ten years after its establishment, it was acquired by investment company DOLCE Technologies. Subsequently, UnitedSiC adopted the Fabless mode and launched over 80 part numbers of devices covering categories such as SiC FET, SiC JFET, and SiC SBD.
As Qorvo, which previously focused on wireless and RF fields, acquired Active Sami, a programmable power management and motor control chip company, in 2019. At that time, Qorvo's vision was to integrate RF and power management or power control into one SoC in the future, greatly improving integration.
Of course, the acquisition of Active Sami is also aimed at driving the company's performance growth. Prior to 2019, Qorvo's revenue was relatively stable at around $3 billion, but in reality, after acquiring Active Sami, Qorvo's revenue data skyrocketed in 2019. Through the acquisition of Active Sami, Qorvo's revenue reached a historic high of $46.46 in the 2021-2022 fiscal year.
However, in the past two years, during the downturn of the semiconductor market, especially the consumer electronics market, smartphones, as one of Qorvo's important markets, have performed poorly, which has seriously affected Qrovo's performance. Qorvo's Q3 2025 financial guidance, released in October this year, fell short of expectations. During the earnings conference call, Qorvo President Robert Bruggeworth revealed that the company is considering exiting the silicon carbide market.
The company believes that exiting the silicon carbide market can reduce its operating expenses. Although the company has made progress in promoting JFET technology, if a new strategic alternative is adopted, the company can create greater value using its current sales and management assets.
Ansenmei's silicon carbide market is gaining momentum, focusing on the data center market
After the official announcement of the acquisition of UnitedSiC, ON Semiconductor stated that this acquisition will complement its extensive EliteSiC power product portfolio, enabling it to meet the high energy efficiency and high power density requirements of the AC-DC segment of artificial intelligence (AI) data center power supplies. It will also accelerate ON Semiconductor's deployment in emerging markets such as electric vehicle circuit breakers and solid-state circuit breakers (SSCBs).
Simon Keeton, President and General Manager of Ansenmei Power Solutions Business Group, said, "As Al workloads become increasingly complex and energy intensive, reliable SiC JFETs that can provide high energy efficiency and handle high voltage will become increasingly important. With the addition of Qorvo's industry-leading SiC JFET technology, our smart power product portfolio will provide customers with an additional option to optimize energy consumption and increase power density
It is worth mentioning that Anson Mei is currently gaining momentum in the field of silicon carbide. In the latest released Q3 2024 financial report, thanks to the performance of silicon carbide and sensors in the electric vehicle market, the overall revenue increased by 2% month on month, slightly higher than market expectations. Especially in the Chinese market, the CEO of ON Semiconductor stated during the earnings conference that it achieved a 5% month on month growth in its automotive business in the third quarter. It is also expected that in the Chinese silicon carbide market, ON Semiconductor's market share is expected to approach 50% for the full year of 2024.
In terms of data center applications, Ansenmei has focused on showcasing data center power solutions at multiple exhibitions this year, with SiC MOSFETs playing an important role in improving power density. Ansenmei stated that products such as multiphase controllers and intelligent power modules used in data center applications have been incorporated into server designs by Nvidia and ARM, and are expected to contribute revenue to the company starting in 2025.
Exclusive SiC JFET technology with significant advantages in data center applications
At present, Qorvo's silicon carbide products mainly include SiC SBD SiC FET、SiC JFET、 It is also the only company in the industry that builds SiC FET products based on JFET, such as power modules.
As mentioned earlier by Ansenmei, "with the increasing complexity and high energy consumption of Al workloads, reliable SiC JFETs that can provide high energy efficiency and handle high voltage will become increasingly important." Therefore, SiC JFETs actually have a high degree of compatibility with Ansenmei's current data center power market.
So what are the advantages of SiC JFET? FET field-effect transistors are generally divided into two categories: one is the familiar MOSFET, which is a metal oxide field-effect transistor, and the other is JFET, which is a junction field-effect transistor.
MOSFET is a normally closed device. When there is no voltage at the gate, the drain and source are non-conductive and require a certain forward voltage to conduct; JFETs are normally open devices, and when there is no voltage at the gate, the drain and source are conductive. When a reverse voltage is applied between the gate and source, the source and drain will be disconnected.
Compared to SiC MOSFET, SiC JFET has many advantages, firstly in terms of reliability. For many years, the reliability of gate oxide in SiC MOSFETs has been a focus of research for major manufacturers. For example, increasing the thickness of the oxide layer in trench gate SiC MOSFETs is one of the directions to solve the reliability of gate oxide.
JFETs generally do not use gate oxides to control the circuit, and there is no problem of reduced channel mobility. So in terms of reliability, JFET has a significant advantage over MOSFET. No negative gate driving voltage is required, which can minimize the difficulty of transitioning from silicon to silicon carbide and reduce design difficulty to the greatest extent possible.
In addition, Qorvo's unique common source common gate configuration also enables SiC JFETs to work in series with low-voltage silicon-based MOSFETs. In a common source common gate configuration, the gate driver controls the drain source voltage of the silicon-based MOSFET, indirectly driving the high-voltage SiC JFET. This configuration provides a gate control voltage range compatible with silicon-based IGBT, superjunction MOSFET, and SiC power FET. Therefore, gate drivers traditionally used to control silicon-based MOSFETs and IGBTs can also be used to drive SiC power FETs.
At the same time, compared to SiC MOSFETs, SiC JFETs have lower on resistance and lower on loss, providing higher switching speed and lower switching loss. Compared to SiC MOSFETs of the same type, SiC JFETs have smaller dimensions, which can also reduce manufacturing costs and shrink device size.
Last March, Qrovo released a high-power 750V SiC FET packaged in TOLL, which has the lowest on impedance in the world, as low as 5.4m Ω, 4-10 times lower than the on impedance of the best silicon-based MOSFETs, SiC MOSFETs, and GaN transistors in the market.
However, according to Anson Mei's introduction, SiC JFETs are not suitable for high-power applications, but in data center applications, SiC JFETs with higher frequency and lower losses are more suitable for these small and medium power applications in order to improve power efficiency. After acquiring Qrovo's SiC business, it can also better coordinate with Anson's current data center power business.
Summary:
The SiC market has fallen into a serious low price internal competition situation in the past year, and the process of market clearing has begun to accelerate. Ansenmei's acquisition of Qorvo's silicon carbide business represents the determination of leading companies to continue strengthening themselves in the fiercely competitive industry environment. It is worth paying attention to whether there will be more acquisition cases for small and medium-sized silicon carbide manufacturers in the future.