AMD receives approval for $35 bn deal to buy Xilinx

Chip-maker AMD has received approval from all necessary authorities to proceed with the $35 billion acquisition of semiconductor company Xilinx.
Meanwhile, graphics chip giant Nvidia recently scrapped the $40 billion deal to acquire British chip designer Arm amid anti-trust probes.

AMD announced that the all-stock deal — originally announced in October 2020 — is set to go through next week on February 14.

“With the exception of the remaining customary closing conditions, all conditions to the transaction closing have been satisfied and the company expects the transaction to close on or about February 14, 2022,” AMD said in a statement.

The deal cleared its final hurdle — regulatory approval in China — on January 27.

The transaction brings together two industry leaders with complementary product portfolios and customers, combining CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, Adaptive SoCs and deep software expertise to enable leadership computing platforms for cloud, edge and intelligent end devices.

The combined $135 billion entity will have nearly 13,000 engineers and expand AMD’s total addressable market to $110 billion.

The combination will create the industry’s leading high performance computing company, significantly expanding the breadth of AMD’s product portfolio and customer set across diverse growth markets where Xilinx is an established leader.

“Our acquisition of Xilinx marks the next leg in our journey to establish AMD as the industry’s high performance computing leader and partner of choice for the largest and most important technology companies in the world,” AMD President and CEO, Dr Lisa Su, said in October.

With over $2.7 billion of annual R&D investment, AMD will have additional talent and scale to deliver an even stronger set of products and domain-specific solutions.