EU approves $35B Synopsys and Ansys merger, subject to divestment conditions

4 hours ago 3

The European Commission (EC) has given the greenlight for Synopsys to acquire Ansys, though the companies must divest some half-a-dozen products as part of the proposed remedies.

Chip design software maker Synopsys revealed last January its plans to acquire Ansys, a simulation software developer that helps engineers model and analyze the physical behavior of products, such as chips, and evaluate their real-world performance.

The $35 billion transaction, involving two publicly-traded companies, is the biggest such deal in the technology sector since Broadcom acquired VMware for $69 billion. That merger also attracted regulatory scrutiny, and was finally passed by the EC last July after the parties agreed to commitments around access and interoperability.

At the crux of the issue is that while such a merger would create a comprehensive chip design and simulation giant, it would also be an overly dominant player that would stifle competitors that don’t offer such a combination. And so the EC says that the firms will sell overlapping parts of their businesses to a “suitable purchaser” approved by the EC. This includes Synopsys’ optics and photonics software such as Code V, LightTools, LucidShape, RSoft and ImSym. While Ansys’ will also divest PowerArtist, software that can analyze and optimize the power consumption of electronic circuits at a very granular level.

The U.K Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) launched its own antitrust investigation into Synopsys and Ansys back in August, and earlier this week the CMA indicated that it was willing to accept a similar divestment offer from the companies to approve the deal.

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Paul is a senior writer based in London, focused largely (but not exclusively) on the world of UK and European startups. He also writes about other subjects that he’s passionate about, such as the business of open source software. Prior to joining TechCrunch in June 2022, Paul had gained more than a decade’s experience covering consumer and enterprise technologies for The Next Web (now owned by the Financial Times) and VentureBeat. Pitches on: paul.sawers [at] techcrunch.com Secure/anon tip-offs via Signal: PSTC.08 See me on Bluesky: @jambo.bsky.social

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