Investment company buys GPU designer Imagination

Investment company Canyon Bridge takes over British designer of mobile GPUs Imagination. At the same time, the investor Tallwood takes over the American MIPS branch of Imagination, which is mainly known for the PowerVR chips.

Canyon Bridge pays 550 million pounds, converted 623 million euros, for Imagination. Tallwood, in turn, pays $54 million for MIPS. The companies are not disclosing why MIPS is being sold as a separate component, but this may be related to US government restrictions on the sale of technology companies to Chinese companies.

One of the financial parties behind Canyon Bridge is China Reform Holdings Company, which is owned by the Chinese state. Canyon previously wanted to take over American Lattice, but the US government blocked it last week because of the possible influence on state security. There is a chance that the British government will also block the acquisition of Imagination to Canyon for similar reasons.

Imagination put itself in the shop window after Apple, by far the largest customer for its PowerVR GPUs, dropped out and started designing its own GPUs. There were reportedly takeover talks between Imagination and Apple, but they came to nothing.