Nvidia plows $2B into Synopsys to make GPUs a must-have for design, simulation customers
(2025/12/01)
- Reference: 1764624127
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/12/01/nvidia_synopsys_2b/
- Source link:
As part of its effort to spread GPUs everywhere, Nvidia is investing $2 billion into simulation giant Synopsys.
The [1]investment is the latest development in a years-long relationship between the two companies and will see the GPU kingmaker purchase $2 billion of Synopsys common stock at a price of $414.79 a share.
While Nvidia's GPUs have become synonymous with AI in recent years, they're by no means limited to machine learning workloads.
[2]
Nvidia has developed numerous frameworks to speed up jobs that traditionally ran on CPUs - from semiconductor manufacturing and physics simulations to electronic design automation - using its chips.
[3]
[4]
"Something that would take weeks could now happen in hours," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during a press conference on Monday.
Synopsys has been one of the most enthusiastic adopters of the tech. At GTC this spring, the company [5]touted up to a 30x speedup for circuit sims running in its PrimeSIM suite and up to a 20x speedup across its Proteus computational lithography suite using Nvidia's latest generation of Blackwell accelerators.
[6]
Synopsys also utilizes Nvidia's NeMo frameworks and NIMs — containerized models containing everything necessary to run them at scale — to power its AI knowledge assistant.
"We started redesigning some of our products about 7 years ago on Nvidia GPUs using the CUDA layer and in a number of cases, we've seen a significant speedup," Synopsys CEO Sassine Ghazi told investors.
As part of today's deal, the duo has committed to expanding support for Nvidia hardware and CUDA-X libraries to a broader range of applications and services. This includes developing digital twins for industries like semiconductor design and manufacturing, robotics, aerospace, automotive, and energy, many of which Synopsys now addresses through the [7]acquisition of Ansys.
[8]
Huang has spent years [9]extolling the virtues of using GPUs to simulate and visualize design or physical processes, like factory operations or datacenter design, in the digital world to suss out issues before committing to solutions in the real world.
[10]HPE pumps AI cloud lineup with extra Nvidia capabilities
[11]GPUs aren't worth their weight in gold – it just feels like they are
[12]HPC won't be an x86 monoculture forever – and it's starting to show
[13]Norway's most powerful supercomputer will use waste heat to raise salmon
Synopsys isn't the first customer Nvidia has thrown money at in recent memory. Back in September, Nvidia announced [14]up to a $100 billion tie-up with OpenAI contingent on the deployment of 10 gigawatts worth of Nvidia hardware.
Last month, Nvidia and longtime partner Microsoft announced a similar arrangement with OpenAI rival Anthropic. Under that deal, Anthropic [15]agreed to purchase $30 billion worth of Azure compute built on Nvidia hardware and services. In exchange, the model builder would receive up to $15 billion in investments - up to $10 billion from Nvidia and up to $5 billion from Redmond.
The difference, in this case, is Nvidia's investment in Synopsys isn't tied to customer milestones. In fact, the deal isn't even exclusive, Ghazi told analysts on the call. "If an AMD or an Intel or whichever customer is wanting to capture a similar opportunity, it's not exclusive," he said.
However, all of these deals effectively serve to incentivize Nvidia customers to field larger quantities of GPUs, either by tying payouts to deployment milestones or, in the case of Synopsys, making the hardware a key enabler of its software stack.
Of course, Nvidia isn't the only one using its amassed wealth to drive adoption of its wares.
AMD is also playing into AI's circular economy, having [16]dangled roughly 10 percent of its stock in front of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and all he needs to claim it is talk his datacenter buddies into spinning up 6 gigawatts worth of Instinct accelerators. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-and-synopsys-announce-strategic-partnership-to-revolutionize-engineering-and-design
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aS4eCHuukYlQ4dvL8GxlaAAAAIA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aS4eCHuukYlQ4dvL8GxlaAAAAIA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aS4eCHuukYlQ4dvL8GxlaAAAAIA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://news.synopsys.com/2025-03-18-Synopsys-Accelerates-Chip-Design-with-NVIDIA-Grace-Blackwell-and-AI-to-Speed-Electronic-Design-Automation
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aS4eCHuukYlQ4dvL8GxlaAAAAIA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.ansys.com/news-center/press-releases/01-06-25-ansys-agrees-to-sell-power-artist-platform
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aS4eCHuukYlQ4dvL8GxlaAAAAIA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/25/nvidia_ai_bubble/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/01/hpe_ai_cloud_nvidia/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/28/gold_gpu_weights/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/27/arm_riscv_hpc/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/26/norway_salmon_super/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/16/race_to_supply_advanced_memory/
[15] https://www.anthropic.com/news/microsoft-nvidia-anthropic-announce-strategic-partnerships
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/06/stargate_openai_amd/
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
The [1]investment is the latest development in a years-long relationship between the two companies and will see the GPU kingmaker purchase $2 billion of Synopsys common stock at a price of $414.79 a share.
While Nvidia's GPUs have become synonymous with AI in recent years, they're by no means limited to machine learning workloads.
[2]
Nvidia has developed numerous frameworks to speed up jobs that traditionally ran on CPUs - from semiconductor manufacturing and physics simulations to electronic design automation - using its chips.
[3]
[4]
"Something that would take weeks could now happen in hours," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during a press conference on Monday.
Synopsys has been one of the most enthusiastic adopters of the tech. At GTC this spring, the company [5]touted up to a 30x speedup for circuit sims running in its PrimeSIM suite and up to a 20x speedup across its Proteus computational lithography suite using Nvidia's latest generation of Blackwell accelerators.
[6]
Synopsys also utilizes Nvidia's NeMo frameworks and NIMs — containerized models containing everything necessary to run them at scale — to power its AI knowledge assistant.
"We started redesigning some of our products about 7 years ago on Nvidia GPUs using the CUDA layer and in a number of cases, we've seen a significant speedup," Synopsys CEO Sassine Ghazi told investors.
As part of today's deal, the duo has committed to expanding support for Nvidia hardware and CUDA-X libraries to a broader range of applications and services. This includes developing digital twins for industries like semiconductor design and manufacturing, robotics, aerospace, automotive, and energy, many of which Synopsys now addresses through the [7]acquisition of Ansys.
[8]
Huang has spent years [9]extolling the virtues of using GPUs to simulate and visualize design or physical processes, like factory operations or datacenter design, in the digital world to suss out issues before committing to solutions in the real world.
[10]HPE pumps AI cloud lineup with extra Nvidia capabilities
[11]GPUs aren't worth their weight in gold – it just feels like they are
[12]HPC won't be an x86 monoculture forever – and it's starting to show
[13]Norway's most powerful supercomputer will use waste heat to raise salmon
Synopsys isn't the first customer Nvidia has thrown money at in recent memory. Back in September, Nvidia announced [14]up to a $100 billion tie-up with OpenAI contingent on the deployment of 10 gigawatts worth of Nvidia hardware.
Last month, Nvidia and longtime partner Microsoft announced a similar arrangement with OpenAI rival Anthropic. Under that deal, Anthropic [15]agreed to purchase $30 billion worth of Azure compute built on Nvidia hardware and services. In exchange, the model builder would receive up to $15 billion in investments - up to $10 billion from Nvidia and up to $5 billion from Redmond.
The difference, in this case, is Nvidia's investment in Synopsys isn't tied to customer milestones. In fact, the deal isn't even exclusive, Ghazi told analysts on the call. "If an AMD or an Intel or whichever customer is wanting to capture a similar opportunity, it's not exclusive," he said.
However, all of these deals effectively serve to incentivize Nvidia customers to field larger quantities of GPUs, either by tying payouts to deployment milestones or, in the case of Synopsys, making the hardware a key enabler of its software stack.
Of course, Nvidia isn't the only one using its amassed wealth to drive adoption of its wares.
AMD is also playing into AI's circular economy, having [16]dangled roughly 10 percent of its stock in front of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and all he needs to claim it is talk his datacenter buddies into spinning up 6 gigawatts worth of Instinct accelerators. ®
Get our [17]Tech Resources
[1] https://nvidianews.nvidia.com/news/nvidia-and-synopsys-announce-strategic-partnership-to-revolutionize-engineering-and-design
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aS4eCHuukYlQ4dvL8GxlaAAAAIA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aS4eCHuukYlQ4dvL8GxlaAAAAIA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aS4eCHuukYlQ4dvL8GxlaAAAAIA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[5] https://news.synopsys.com/2025-03-18-Synopsys-Accelerates-Chip-Design-with-NVIDIA-Grace-Blackwell-and-AI-to-Speed-Electronic-Design-Automation
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aS4eCHuukYlQ4dvL8GxlaAAAAIA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.ansys.com/news-center/press-releases/01-06-25-ansys-agrees-to-sell-power-artist-platform
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/systems&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aS4eCHuukYlQ4dvL8GxlaAAAAIA&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2024/03/25/nvidia_ai_bubble/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2025/12/01/hpe_ai_cloud_nvidia/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/28/gold_gpu_weights/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/27/arm_riscv_hpc/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2025/11/26/norway_salmon_super/
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/16/race_to_supply_advanced_memory/
[15] https://www.anthropic.com/news/microsoft-nvidia-anthropic-announce-strategic-partnerships
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/06/stargate_openai_amd/
[17] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/