Alphawave agrees £1.8bn takeover by America’s Qualcomm

Chip designer Alphawave has agreed to a 2.4 billion dollar (£1.8 billion) takeover by US semiconductor group Qualcomm in the latest blow to the London market.

Qualcomm is offering to pay 183p per share in cash for London-listed Alphawave, which is a near-96% premium to its closing price before the takeover interest was revealed.

But Qualcomm has also put forward an alternative share offer to Alphawave investors, which would see them receive Qualcomm stock instead of cash.

The £1.8 billion price is less than half the £3.1 billion value at which Toronto-headquartered Alphawave floated when it listed just over four years ago.

It also sees the London market lose yet another listing after a recent flurry of firms defecting from the City for rival exchanges overseas and a number of firms being bought out.

Tony Pialis, president and chief executive of Alphawave, said: “Qualcomm’s acquisition of Alphawave represents a significant milestone for us and an opportunity for our business to join forces with a respected industry leader and drive value to our customers.

“Together, we will unlock new opportunities for growth, drive innovation, and create a leading player in artificial intelligence (AI) compute and connectivity solutions.”

For Qualcomm, the acquisition is seen boosting its capabilities in AI infrastructure by expanding its intellectual property portfolio in data centre and 5G networking.

As well as data centres, Alphawave technology is used in 5G infrastructure and autonomous vehicles.

Cristiano Amon, president and chief executive of Qualcomm, said: “The combined teams share the goal of building advanced technology solutions and enabling next-level connected computing performance across a wide array of high-growth areas, including data centre infrastructure.”

The deal is expected to complete in the first three months of 2026.

Alphawave, which listed in London in May 2021, has around 830 employees across operations in Canada, the UK, Europe and Korea.