{
  "type": "article",
  "title": "Nearly $4 Billion Deal Pulls AI Chip Software Maker Modular Into Qualcomm's Orbit",
  "summary": "Qualcomm is acquiring Silicon Valley chip software startup Modular for nearly $4 billion, a move that pushes the company well beyond its mobile roots and deeper into the AI and data center markets.",
  "content": "Chip giant Qualcomm is set to buy the buzzy Silicon Valley startup Modular for nearly $4 billion. Both companies announced the deal on Wednesday, with Qualcomm saying it expects to issue up to 19.2 million shares of common stock, a figure that comes to just under $4 billion based on the company's last closing share price. The acquisition is expected to close in the second half of this year.\n\nThe timing is striking: the deal lands just nine months after Modular raised $250 million at a $1.6 billion valuation.\n\nWhat Modular Actually Does\nModular builds and sells a chip software platform. It also produces its own proprietary coding language that lets developers write AI software capable of running across different chips, without having to rewrite the code for each one. As part of the deal, the startup's entire team is expected to move over to Qualcomm, including its two cofounders and around 150 employees.\n\n“We believe the future belongs to developer-friendly, horizontal platforms that can run across diverse compute environments and give customers real choice in how and where they deploy AI,” Qualcomm president and CEO Cristiano Amon said in a statement.\n\nLooking Beyond the Phone\nThe acquisition is a clear signal that Qualcomm wants to grow beyond chips for the mobile device market, which still generates the vast majority of its revenue. Amon recently said the company is working on 40 different chip designs for AI gadgets, spanning smart glasses, jewelry, earbuds, pins and watches. At the same time, Qualcomm has been pushing hard into the data center market, which demands far more powerful chips.\n\nLate last year, the company acquired Ventana Micro Systems, a startup focused on building server CPUs based on RISC-V, an open-standard chip architecture. Qualcomm is also developing custom ASIC designs, or application-specific integrated circuits, for data centers, with China's ByteDance said to be an early customer.\n\nThe Minds Behind Modular\nModular was founded in 2022 by Chris Lattner and Tim Davis. Both worked on Google's TPU chips before leaving to start their own company. Lattner's resume before Google is a storied one: he built the open source compiler infrastructure project LLVM, as well as Apple's Swift programming language. He also briefly led Tesla's Autopilot software program, a role later taken on by famed AI researcher Andrej Karpathy, who recently joined Anthropic.\n\nTaking On the Giants, Then Partnering With Them\nLattner and Davis set out to create a unifying software layer that helps cloud businesses squeeze as much performance as possible out of GPUs and CPUs. In doing so, Modular took on Nvidia's CUDA, a closed software system for GPUs, and AMD's ROCm, which is open-source but not always easy to port to other chips.\n\nThat left Modular in an awkward spot. It eventually struck partnerships with those same big chipmakers, with hyperscalers like Amazon, and even with Apple, all while competing against them and the software they built in-house.\n\nAt the time, Lattner believed the software problem he and Davis were tackling had to be solved outside a Big Tech environment because it was “structural.” In the end, though, it was the structure of Qualcomm that won out.\n\nWhat this means for you\n• For investors: The nearly $4 billion deal is being paid in stock, so it has direct implications for Qualcomm shareholders.\n• For developers: Modular's technology aims to let AI software run across different chips without rewriting code, which could make building AI apps easier and cheaper over time.\n\nQuestions & Answers\n\n1. How much is Qualcomm paying for Modular?\nQualcomm is acquiring Modular for nearly $4 billion, and expects to issue up to 19.2 million shares of common stock for the deal.\n\n2. What does Modular make?\nModular builds a chip software platform and its own coding language that lets AI software run across different chips without rewriting the code for each one.\n\n3. When is the deal expected to close?\nThe acquisition is expected to close in the second half of this year.\n\n4. Who founded Modular?\nModular was founded in 2022 by Chris Lattner and Tim Davis, who previously worked on Google's TPU chips.\n\n5. What happens to Modular's team?\nThe startup's entire team is expected to join Qualcomm, including its two cofounders and around 150 employees.\n\n6. How is Qualcomm expanding beyond mobile?\nQualcomm is working on 40 different chip designs for AI gadgets and is making a major push into the data center market.",
  "url": "https://trendkia.com/en/technology/kariba-4-biliyana-dolara-men-modular-ko-kharidegi-qualcomm-mobaila-chipa-se-age-barhane-ki-bari-taiyari-2726",
  "category": "Technology",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-24",
  "tags": [
    "Qualcomm",
    "Modular",
    "Chip Acquisition",
    "AI Chips",
    "Chris Lattner",
    "Data Center",
    "Semiconductors"
  ],
  "language": "en",
  "site": "TrendKia"
}