Silicon Labs is to pay $308m in cash to acquire California-based Redpine Signals’ wifi and Bluetooth assets, a development centre in India, and its patent portfolio.
 
“The acquisition of Redpine Signals’ ultra-low-power wifi and Bluetooth products and extensive intellectual property portfolio will expand our leadership in IoT wireless technology,” said Tyson Tuttle, CEO of Texas-based Silicon Labs. “The addition of these products into our worldwide sales and distribution network will drive further momentum in the smart home, industrial IoT and commercial markets for customers who want to get to market quickly with wifi enabled connected devices.”
 
Wifi 6 (802.11ax) is an important evolution of the wifi standard to meet the low power, performance, security and interoperability requirements needed in environments with hundreds or thousands of connected IoT devices. The integration of the Redpine Signals technology will accelerate Silicon Labs’ roadmap for Wifi 6 silicon and software. The acquisition also includes Bluetooth Classic IP including extended data rate for audio applications including wearables, hearables, voice assistants and smart speakers.
 
The Redpine acquisition includes an at-scale design centre with around 200 employees in Hyderabad, India. The addition of Redpine’s multidisciplinary and high-performing team will help Silicon Labs scale R&D faster and more efficiently in one of the most talent-rich locations in India.
 
“My team is excited to join Silicon Labs to help build a smarter, more connected world,” said Venkat Mattela, founder and CEO of Redpine Signals. “Backed by two decades of advanced research in OFDM and MIMO systems, Redpine has created highly-differentiated, low-power multiprotocol SoCs. Going forward, low-power Wifi 6 is a key wireless technology for connectivity in IoT devices.”
 
Silicon Labs expects the transaction to add about $20mn in incremental revenue on an annual basis for 2020, to enhance its IoT revenue growth rate at comparable gross margin, and to be accretive to earnings per share on a non-GAAP basis in the second half of 2021. The transaction will add approximately $15m of non-GAAP operating expenses annually.
 
The boards of directors of both companies and the stockholders of Redpine Signals have approved the transaction, which is expected to close in the second quarter of 2020 subject to customary closing conditions. JP Morgan Securities served as exclusive financial advisor to Redpine Signals.
 
Redpine Signals is a semiconductor and systems company founded in 2001 and headquartered in San Jose, California. It is focused on development of low-power and high-performance wireless and MCU products for IoT, wearable, home automation, medical, industrial and automotive applications.