Onsemi buying cash-strapped Synaptics in $7 billion all-stock deal — smart power meets edge AI hardware
Onsemi and Synaptics late on Thursday announced that they had entered into an agreement under which the former will acquire the latter in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $7 billion. The takeover will transform Onsemi from a maker of sensor and power management semiconductors into a company with a rich portfolio of products for AI infrastructure, automotive, client, industrial, robotics, and AR/VR applications. To some degree, this will strengthen Onsemi’s position as an integrated device manufacturer.
Onsemi’s acquisition of Synaptics is highly strategic. Synaptics has a highly diversified product portfolio that spans from compute and processing solutions to touch and biometric sensors and from display solutions to wireless connectivity. By contrast, Onsemi is mostly focused on power management devices and sensors. While the company has other businesses too, they are by far not as significant as power and sensors. The two companies say that by merging their product portfolios, they will have key building blocks — power, sense, connectivity, compute, and control — to address the physical AI market.
In fact, with its Edge AI platform, which combines dedicated AI processors, neural processing units (NPUs), wireless connectivity technologies including Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS, as well as an open-source software stack, Synaptics arguably has a much more comprehensive product portfolio to address Physical AI than Onsemi does. Yet, Synaptics has been bleeding money in 2025 – 2026 as its revenue dropped sharply from the levels demonstrated in 2022. By contrast, while Onsemi’s sales have been declining since 2022 and did not show any signs of rebound, the company remained profitable. This is perhaps why Synaptics agreed to be acquired in an all-stock transaction.
“Together with onsemi, we will combine Synaptics’ strengths in AI-native compute, connectivity, and human-machine interface with onsemi’s leadership in intelligent power and sensing to offer customers integrated solutions and development platforms across every layer of the Edge AI stack, deepening customer engagement and expanding across a greater total addressable market,” said Rahul Patel, chief executive of Synaptics.
Developing a comprehensive platform for robotics, or physical AI, applications may make the combined Onsemi + Synaptics company bigger than the sum of all parts. Today, many developers in automotive, industrial, and robotics prefer integrated platforms that combine compute, connectivity, sensing, power management, and software from a single supplier. Given how fast technologies are evolving these days, many developers simply do not have time to build their own platform from building blocks obtained from various suppliers, so the combined company may have better chances with an integrated platform than vendors without one. Back in the day, AMD acquired ATI to get chipsets and graphics, while Qualcomm acquired a dozen companies expanding its product portfolio and building all-new solutions.
“The next phase of [AI] innovation will depend on systems that can sense, decide, act and adapt in real time,” said Hassane El-Khoury, chief executive of Onsemi. “This shift towards Physical AI will require Power, Sense, Connected Compute and Control to work together seamlessly. The addition of Synaptics helps position onsemi at the intersection of these four pillars, enabling us to capture a significantly larger AI opportunity that extends beyond AI data center and into edge applications. This transaction would add immediate connected compute capabilities, expand our software and ecosystem reach and position Onsemi to deliver greater value as customers increasingly seek intelligent systems.”
Synaptics could benefit from onsemi’s manufacturing capabilities, particularly for automotive and industrial products that use mature process technologies. However, given that these products have a very long lifecycle and customers in these industries do not like changes, we would not expect a rapid migration of Synaptics’ portfolio to onsemi fabs. At least, not for these applications. Meanwhile, for client devices and for emerging applications, Synaptics will likely use Onsemi’s semiconductor production capacity.
The acquisition has received unanimous approval from the boards of directors of both companies. Under the agreement, each Synaptics shareholder will receive 1.35 shares of Onsemi common stock for every Synaptics share they own, so Synaptics investors will hold approximately 12% of the combined company after the transaction closes. Based on the companies’ average volume-weighted share prices over the previous ten trading days, the offer represents a premium of approximately 19%, which is less than stockholders tend to get when the company they own is taken over. One member of Synaptics’ board is also expected to join Onsemi’s board of directors. The deal is expected to be completed in mid-2027 after it is approved by Synaptics shareholders and various regulators.
