October 12, 2022

Alphawave IP

Alphawave IP (AWE) is a semiconductor firm focused on developing high-speed wired connectivity IP for data infrastructure end markets. The complexity at the leading edge of semiconductor design is necessitating a new tool kit for wired connections inside and between chips as traditional methods of scaling down wiring no longer yield competitive results. The company’s founders have extensive knowledge of this niche domain (SerDes) and have quickly developed a unique connectivity IP portfolio, already a year or so ahead of competitors, which has allowed them to rapidly gain share in a short period of time. While the company IPO’d in May of ’21 and have incurred erroneous accusations of illegitimacy/self-dealing in the press, the adoption of their solutions is expected to truly materialize in ’23 as design wins from ’19-’21 scale up into full production. With their lead in connectivity IP accelerating, Alphawave is now undergoing a transformation to provide entire connectivity chiplet design solutions in addition to licensing following the acquisition of OpenFive, a SoC design firm. This transaction should create a scaled firm in the style of Marvell as the adoption of chiplets massively increase the number of connection points within data centers/networks and therefore AWE’s market.

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