Microchip expands against the trend, acquiring two companies in a row

Despite news of salary cuts and shutdowns at the beginning of the year, Microchip, the world's leading semiconductor solution supplier, did not stop expanding as a result. On the contrary, the company announced the acquisition of two companies in a short month, demonstrating its firm market layout and forward-looking strategic vision.

On April 11th, Microchip successfully acquired VSI, headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. VSI is a company that focuses on in vehicle network technology. Its in vehicle network (IVN), the automotive SerDes Alliance (ASA) open standard technology, has a wide range of applications in the automotive industry. VSI provides high-speed, asymmetric, and open standard sensor and display connectivity technology and products based on the Automotive SerDes Alliance (ASA) in vehicle network (IVN), adding new vitality to Microchip's automotive network product portfolio.

This acquisition is of great significance to Microchip. "VSI's knowledgeable team, market appeal, and ASA Motion Link technology and products will further strengthen our position in the automotive networking field and better serve the ADAS trend we are concerned about," said Mitch Obolsky, Senior Vice President of Automotive Products, Networking, and the company.

He further pointed out that as camera and display connectivity becomes one of the fastest-growing and largest IVN markets, with the help of VSI technology and products, Microchip will be able to provide products covering all three pillars (Ethernet, PCIe, and ASA Motion Link), further consolidating its leading position in automotive safety, microcontrollers, motor control, touch, and power management solutions.

VSI CEO Steve Kang also highly recognized this acquisition, stating, "Microchip has an excellent reputation and a strong supply chain in the automotive network field. Our team is looking forward to joining them and facing the growing ADAS and digital cockpit connectivity market together."

Just four days later, on April 15th, Microchip once again announced the acquisition of another innovative technology company - Neuronix AI Labs. The purpose of this acquisition is to expand Microchip's ability to deploy high energy efficiency, AI enabled edge solutions on field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs).

Neuronix AI Labs is renowned for its neural network sparse optimization technology, which can significantly reduce the power consumption, size, and computational complexity of tasks such as image classification, object detection, and semantic segmentation, while maintaining high accuracy. This is undoubtedly a great blessing for systems that have strict limitations on cost, size, and power consumption.

Microchip's mid-range PolarFireFPGA and SoC are already leading the industry in terms of low power consumption, reliability, and safety features. The acquisition of Neuronix AI Labs technology will enable Microchip to develop cost-effective large-scale edge deployment components designed for computer vision applications and enable AI/ML processing power to multiply on low-end and mid-range FPGAs.

Regarding this, Bruce Weyer, Vice President of Microchip FPGA Business Unit, stated, "The acquisition of Neuronix AI Labs technology will further enhance the energy efficiency of our FPGA and SoC in intelligent edge systems, which utilize AI/ML algorithms. Combined with our VectorBlox design process, Neuronix technology will significantly improve neural network performance efficiency and provide excellent GOPS/watt performance in our low-power PolarFire FPGA and SoC."

Yaron Raz, CEO of Neuronix AI Labs, also expressed a positive view on this acquisition, saying, "Joining the Microchip team provides us with a unique opportunity to expand and adjust our FPGA product portfolio, which sets industry standards for energy efficiency. We look forward to working with Microchip to bring more advanced and efficient AI solutions to the market."

In summary, while facing market challenges, Microchip still adheres to its expansion strategy by acquiring companies with innovative technologies to enhance its own strength. These two acquisitions will not only bring new growth momentum to the company, but also further consolidate its leading position in the semiconductor solutions field.