NUVIA (company)

NUVIA develops semiconductor components and high-performance processors designed for compute-intensive devices and applications. The company focuses on designing systems on a chip (SoC) and CPU cores that optimize computing performance, power efficiency, and scalability. The company was founded in early 2019 and acquired by Qualcomm in March 2021. NUVIA is now a subsidiary of Qualcomm.

NUVIA began in early 2019 with the goal of reimagining silicon design to deliver industry-leading performance and energy efficiency for data centers. The company was founded in Santa Clara, California by three senior industry experts: Gerard Williams III, John Bruno, and Manu Gulati.The three founders have collectively driven system engineering and silicon design for more than twenty chips and more than one hundred patents and have held engineering leadership roles at Google, Apple, ARM, Broadcom, and AMD.

Gerard Williams III, NUVIA's CEO, was chief architect for all Apple CPU and SoC development. For CPUs, he led the Cyclone, Typhoon, Twister, Hurricane, Monsoon, Vortex, Lightning, and Firestorm architecture work. He was also the chief architect for the Apple MAC hardware platform's M1 Pro, M1 Max, and M1 Ultra.

NUVIA made its public debut in November 2019 with the announcement of its first fundraising round, a $53 million series A round co-led by prominent Silicon Valley investors Capricorn Investment Group, Dell Technologies Capital, Mayfield, and WRVI Capital, with additional participation from Nepenthe LLC.

In September 2020, NUVIA secured its second raise, a $240 million series B round led by Mithril Capital in partnership with Sehat Sutardja and Weili Dai (founders of Marvell Technology Group), funds and accounts managed by BlackRock, Fidelity Management & Research Company LLC, and Temasek, with additional participation from Atlantic Bridge, Redline Capital, Capricorn Investment Group, Dell Technologies Capital, Mayfield, Nepenthe LLC, and WRVI Capital.

On March 16, 2021, Qualcomm announced that its subsidiary, Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., completed its acquisition of NUVIA for $1.4 billion before working capital and other adjustments. Many of Qualcomm's partners welcomed the acquisition, issuing statements in support, including Samsung, Sony, OnePlus, and LG. The deal saw Qualcomm return to custom CPU designs based on the Arm architecture.

The acquisition of NUVIA builds on Qualcomm's Snapdragon technology, delivering step-function improvements in CPU performance and power efficiency to meet the demands of next-generation 5G computing. As part of the transaction, NUVIA founders Gerard Williams III, Manu Gulati, and John Bruno, and their employees joined Qualcomm.

Gary Explains - A breakdown of the Nuvia acquisition

In April 2022, during Qualcomm's Q2 2022 earnings call, the CEO stated, "We have been developing our own CPU that's been designed by the NUVIA team. And we are going after the performance tier ... development is on track, and we expect to have that in late 2023."

NUVIA CPUs planned for 2023