AMD reaches agreement to acquire Xilinx for $ 35 billion

AMD wants to acquire FPGA manufacturer Xilinx for $ 35 billion, roughly 30 billion euros. The companies have reached an agreement on this. AMD will pay for the acquisition with shares. The companies expect the acquisition to be completed by the end of 2021.

The acquisition has been unanimously approved by the board of AMD and Xilinx, AMD reports. Shareholders and regulators have yet to approve the acquisition. Earlier this month there were rumors that AMD was in talks with the FPGA manufacturer. AMD announced the acquisition plans with the presentation of its quarterly results.

Xilinx will become part of AMD and AMD CEO Lisa Su will lead the combined company. Victor Peng, the current CEO of Xilinx, will remain responsible for Xilinx’s activities within AMD. When the acquisition is completed, at least two Xilinx executives will join AMD’s board of directors.

With the acquisition, AMD aims to grow in the data center market. Xilinx is the largest supplier of FPGAs worldwide. The company was founded in 1984 and was the first to market a field-programmable gate array. These programmable chips are mainly used in data centers, communication networks and industrial and scientific applications. Intel entered the FPGA market five years ago by acquiring Altera for $ 16.7 billion.

The Xilinx acquisition is AMD’s largest to date. The last major acquisition was that of ATi Technologies, which in 2006 was paid $ 5.4 billion. The multi-billion acquisition of Xilinx is funded with shares.

Plug-in cards from Xilinx with FPGAs