Synopsys → Ansys
The largest acquisition in Synopsys's history: about $35bn for Ansys, the engineering-simulation company, joining the software used to design chips with the software used to predict how whole products behave — cleared after narrow divestitures and closed in July 2025.
A cash-and-stock deal combining chip design software with engineering simulation, cleared after divestitures in the US, EU and China.
- Value
- $35B
- Announced
- January 2024
- Completed
- July 2025
- Sector
- Technology
- Deal type
- acquisition
- Acquirer
- Synopsys (United States)
- Target
- Ansys (United States)
Why it mattered
Synopsys is one of three companies, with Cadence and Siemens EDA, that held about 75% of the chip-design software market in 2024. Ansys, of Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, sells multiphysics simulation used on everything from chips to cars and aircraft, and the two had been research partners since 2017. The agreement was announced on 16 January 2024, the month Sassine Ghazi took over as chief executive from the founder, Aart de Geus. Ansys shareholders were offered $197 in cash plus 0.345 of a Synopsys share, an implied $390.19 and a premium of about 29%, leaving them with about 16.5% of the combined company. The $19bn of cash was to come from Synopsys's own resources and $16bn of committed borrowing, and Synopsys promised $400m of annual cost savings by year three and $400m of extra revenue by year four.
Because the companies mostly sold different things, the overlaps were small. The European Commission cleared the deal in its first phase in January 2025. The US Federal Trade Commission alleged harm in three narrow markets — optical and photonic design tools and RTL power analysis — and its consent order of May 2025 required Synopsys's Optical Solutions Group and Ansys's PowerArtist tool to be sold; Keysight bought both. The deal closed on 17 July 2025.
What it left behind
The debt came with it: long-term borrowings rose from $16m to $13.5bn within a year. Synopsys was reported in November 2025 to be planning to cut about 10% of its workforce, and it kept pruning — its processor IP business, including the ARC cores, was agreed for sale to GlobalFoundries in January 2026 and completed by August. Nvidia bought $2bn of Synopsys shares in December 2025 at $414.79 each, well below the $559.96 on which the share component of the offer had been priced. The first joint products appeared in March 2026. In May 2026 Synopsys signed a cooperation agreement with Elliott, which put Jesse Cohn, one of the fund's managing partners, on the board. As of August 2026 Synopsys expected Ansys to contribute $2.98bn of its $9.715bn revenue for the year. A merger of adjacent tools can usually be cleared with narrow carve-outs; the harder test is whether promised cross-selling shows up before shareholders start asking questions.