Synopsys Signs 1B-Plus AWS Silicon IP Deal and OpenAI Partnership to Build Specialized Chip Design AI Model

Synopsys landed two major strategic agreements on September 30, cementing its position at the intersection of chip design and artificial intelligence. First, the company signed a multi-year deal worth more than $1 billion with Amazon Web Services to license silicon intellectual property across Amazon's custom chip portfolio, including its Nitro, Graviton and Trainium processors. Amazon becomes the lead customer for Synopsys' application-optimized silicon IP business under an arrangement that combines licensing fees with a royalty component, meaning Synopsys revenue can grow in step with Amazon's chip production volumes. Synopsys will also expand its own use of AWS cloud infrastructure and optimize more of its software for the Trainium and Graviton platforms.

Later the same day, Synopsys and OpenAI announced a separate multi-year agreement to jointly develop GPT-Synopsys, a specialized AI model built to operate Synopsys' electronic design automation tools directly within the semiconductor design workflow. The model is designed to handle power, performance and area optimization, timing closure, and verification, with AI agents running the tools, interpreting results, and iterating on designs for engineer review. OpenAI will license Synopsys' EDA software, both companies will share revenue, and they will jointly market the product globally. GPT-Synopsys will run on OpenAI-hosted infrastructure and integrate with Synopsys AI and Synopsys Autopilot, with early customer engagements already underway.

Synopsys shares rose more than 4% in premarket trading on the AWS deal news and continued to outperform peers through the close of regular trading, reflecting investor confidence that the license-plus-royalty structure and the OpenAI partnership together broaden the company's long-term revenue base beyond traditional upfront software licensing.