Synopsys

Synopsys,[] Inc. is an American multinational electronic design automation company headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, that focuses on design and verification of silicon chips, electronic system-level design and verification, and reusable components. Synopsys supplies tools and services to the semiconductor design and manufacturing industry. Products include tools for implementation of digital and analog circuits, simulators, and debugging environments that assist in the design of chips and computer systems. In 2024, Synopsys was listed as the 12th largest software company in the world.

History

Synopsys was founded by Aart de Geus, David Gregory, Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli and Bill Krieger in 1986 in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The company was initially established as Optimal Solutions with a charter to develop and market logic synthesis technology developed by the team at General Electric's Advanced Computer-Aided Engineering Group. The company changed its name to Synopsys and moved to Mountain View, California in 1987. It became a public company through an initial public offering in February 1992, opening on NASDAQ at $18 a share and closing on the first trading day at $31.50. 2 million shares were offered; the company offered 1.55 million shares and stockholders offered 450,000 shares.
In 2006, the company built a supercomputer for EDA applications using commodity Linux servers and off-the-shelf hardware that was listed on the TOP500 as the 242nd most powerful computer, based on results on the LINPACK benchmark.
Synopsys has been a constituent of the Nasdaq-100 and S&P 500 indices since 2017.
The integration of artificial intelligence has become increasingly important in electronic design automation, enabling notable advances in the automation, efficiency, and complexity of chip design processes. According to the company, Synopsys engineers began developing reinforcement learning applications for electronic design automation in 2017, which led to the introduction of the DSO.ai product for digital chip implementation in 2020, followed by a series of AI tools for IC verification and test, as well as other applications. In 2023, Synopsys announced the Copilot product in collaboration with Microsoft that leveraged large language models from OpenAI to assist in chip design.
In August 2023, Synopsys named COO Sassine Ghazi as CEO. Ghazi succeeded Aart de Geus in January 2024, with de Geus transitioning to the role of executive chairman.
Over the years, Synopsys has acquired numerous companies as a core part of its business strategy to expand its capabilities in electronic design automation, semiconductor IP, and related software sectors. Industry analysts have noted that these acquisitions have enabled Synopsys to build a broad portfolio and remain competitive within the fast-evolving semiconductor and software industries.
On July 17, 2025, Synopsys completed its acquisition of Ansys, a global provider of engineering simulation software. The transaction, first announced on January 16, 2024, was valued at approximately $35 billion, making it the largest acquisition in Synopsys’ history. Several media outlets described the deal as one of the largest transactions in the engineering and software industry. The merger combines Synopsys’ EDA dominance with Ansys’ multiphysics simulation expertise, promising a new era of co-optimized chip and system design In November 2025, it was reported that Synopsys planned to lay off about 10% of its workforce and close certain locations as part of a restructure following the acquisition of Ansys. The layoffs will largely take place during fiscal year 2026.

Markets and competition

Synopsys faces significant competition in the electronic design automation market, primarily from Cadence Design Systems and Siemens EDA, with the three companies collectively dominating approximately 75% of the global EDA market as of 2024. Additionally, Synopsys is the second largest semiconductor design intellectual property company by revenue and leads in market share for IP license revenues, notably providing reusable chip design modules such as those supporting Ethernet and UALink for advanced data center connectivity and AI accelerator infrastructure.

Geographic presence

Headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, Synopsys maintains extensive office locations worldwide, including a strong presence across North America, Asia, and Europe. In the United States, the company’s largest concentration of employees is in the San Francisco Bay Area, comprising more than 1,480 staff, with additional sizable clusters in Austin, Boston, Portland, and Hillsboro, with thousands of additional employees. The total number of US employee is more than 7000. India serves as a critical hub, especially in Bengaluru, Noida, and Hyderabad, where Synopsys employs more than 7000 people. As of 2025, Synopsys' workforce numbers approximately 28000 worldwide, with thousands employees distributed across additional offices and remote locations, including significant operations in Canada, Mexico, Armenia, Singapore, and other regions. Its international offices can be found in cities such as Ottawa, Toronto, and Vancouver ; Yerevan and Gyumri ; Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Noida ; Penang ; and Singapore, among others.
Synopsys operates on a global scale, with its business spread across several major regions and markets. The United States is the company’s largest market, contributing 44.71% of total revenue in fiscal year 2024. Other significant markets include China, which represented 16.15% of revenue ; Korea, accounting for 12.62% ; and Europe, with 10.03%. The company also recorded 16.49% of its revenue under the "Other Countries" category, highlighting a diversified international footprint.

Business in the United States

In addition to doing business with multiple American chip design and system integration companies, Synopsys maintains government contracts, which are often focused on research and development initiatives.
In 2020, the United States Department of Defense announced Synopsys as a partner in U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Automatic Implementation of Secure Silicon research program along with ARM, Boeing, IBM, and other entities focused on developing automated design tools for secure chips. In October 2022, Synopsys joined Intel's US Military Aerospace and Government Alliance, under which Synopsys supplies secure EDA tools, IP, and design services for the US DoD and other government branches along with other chip design companies including Cadence and Siemens EDA. In 2025, DARPA announced companies that have been selected for the initial stage of the government’s Quantum Benchmarking Initiatives, in which Synopsys is participating along with Hewlett Packard, Applied Materials, University of Wisconsin and other organizations to advance quantum computing research and development. The company contributes its expertise in modeling and simulation, EDA tools and semiconductor IP, as part of this multi-partner effort to determine whether an industrially useful quantum computer can be built more rapidly than conventional projections suggest.

Business in China

In 2017, the company established a $100 million strategic investment fund for the Chinese market.
In April 2021, following a Washington Post report on the use of Synopsys and Cadence Design Systems technology in the People's Liberation Army's military-civil fusion efforts, U.S. legislators Michael McCaul and Tom Cotton requested that the United States Department of Commerce tighten controls on the sales of semiconductor manufacturing software. In 2022, Bloomberg reported that Synopsys was under investigation by the United States Department of Commerce for unlawful technology transfers to sanctioned companies in China such as Huawei's HiSilicon and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation.
In May 2025, the Trump administration briefly paused the issuing of licenses for exports of airplane and semiconductor technology to China, which impacted Synopsys and other American Electronic Design Automation vendors.

Offices in Armenia

Synopsys Armenia is one of the largest Synopsys sites outside the United States, employing more than 1,000 people across two offices in Yerevan and one in Gyumri, making it one of the largest IT employers in the country. The Armenian offices serve as a key research and development hub, providing support for electronic design automation, design for manufacturing, and semiconductor intellectual property solutions. Synopsys Armenia’s teams work on advanced logic and analog integrated circuit design, software development, and verification, contributing both to global product support and core innovation. In addition to technical work, Synopsys Armenia invests heavily in workforce development and professional education, collaborating with local universities to train highly skilled specialists in microelectronics and related fields. This long-standing commitment has positioned Synopsys Armenia as a driving force for technological and educational advancement within Armenia.

Adoption of AI technologies

In the early 2010s, Synopsys launched its Smart Everything Everywhere initiative to explore applications of artificial intelligence within electronic design automation tools. This strategy envisioned the integration of intelligent capabilities into electronic design automation tools, positioning Synopsys to leverage AI for addressing the increasing complexity of semiconductor design challenges. The strategic commitment was formalized in 2017 when Synopsys engineers, inspired by Google's AlphaGo victory over Go master Lee Sedol in 2016, began developing reinforcement learning applications for electronic design automation with management approval intelligence-driven EDA solutions.
In March 2020, Synopsys introduced DSO.ai, a cloud-based AI-based software tool for chip design, The software uses AI to automate logic synthesis as well as place and route decisions for circuit blocks. The tool searches for optimization targets in large solution spaces of chip design to enhance power, performance, and area metrics.
According to Synopsys, DSO.ai was used in over 100 commercial chip tape-outs by 2023; the company stated that users observed increases in productivity and reductions in power consumption.
In March 2023, Synopsys expanded its artificial intelligence applications by introducing VSO.ai and TSO.ai as part of the Synopsys.ai suite. VSO.ai uses machine learning to accelerate verification coverage closure and identify functional coverage gaps, while TSO.ai applies reinforcement learning to optimize test pattern generation. Renesas reported achieving up to 10x improvement in reducing functional coverage holes and up to 30% increase in IP verification productivity using VSO.ai.
In November 2023, Synopsys launched Synopsys.ai Copilot through a collaboration with Microsoft, integrating Azure OpenAI service to provide generative artificial intelligence capabilities for semiconductor design via the use of large language models. Synopsys.ai Copilot supports natural language queries in chip design workflows; Synopsys asserts it may help mitigate anticipated staffing shortfalls in the semiconductor industry.
As of 2025, the evolution of Synopsys' AI strategy has progressed beyond individual AI tools toward transforming entire workflows. According to industry analysis, early-career engineers in chip design traditionally spend up to 40% of their time searching for information and performing repetitive manual tasks, creating significant inefficiencies in the design process. Synopsys has responded by developing assistive AI technologies that can process large amounts of proprietary technical documentation and EDA tool logs, generate optimized code and scripts, and provide real-time debugging suggestions. Synopsys reports that some users have applied AI-based tools to tasks such as analog circuit design, register-transfer level code generation, timing analysis, and design rule checking, with the intent of reallocating engineering effort toward more complex design activities.
At the March 2025 SNUG conference, CEO Sassine Ghazi presented Synopsys’s strategic framework for AgentEngineer technologies, which the company describes as progressing from AI assistance toward more autonomous chip design workflows. Analogous to the classification of vehicular autonomy, this framework defines five distinct levels of automation designed to address the semiconductor industry’s talent shortage and empower engineers to undertake more creative, value-added work while accelerating time-to-market:

Level	Short Description	Details and Illustrations
Level 1	Current AI assistants and copilots creating scripts using large language models	AI-Assisted Design Automation: AI works alongside designers in daily tools to enable conversational interactions and automated script generation. The system provides productivity boosts and can double productivity for memory providers. For example, Synopsys.ai Copilot converts natural language requirements into formal verification assertions and generates RTL code snippets with guardrails and correctness checking.
Level 2	Agents acting on specific workflow tasks	Task-Specific AI Applications: Specialized AI agents are deployed including DSO.ai for design-space optimization of digital circuit implementation flows, VSO.ai to improve verification coverage gaps, TSO.ai for test optimization, and ASO.ai for analog circuit design. TSO.ai provides autonomous test optimization, significantly improving throughput.
Level 3	Multi-agent coordination across workflows	Coordinated Multi-Agent Systems: Multiple AI agents collaborate across design, verification, test, and manufacturing stages. Agents share context and coordinate handoffs to optimize full flows rather than isolated tasks.
Level 4	Advanced learning capabilities with quality assessment and flow refinement	Self-Improving AI Systems: for example, DSO.ai demonstrates continuous self-refinement via reinforcement learning, rewarding actions that improve power, performance, and area and penalizing regressions. Hundreds of chip tape-outs have achieved significant PPA improvements, faster runtimes, and improved verification coverage by more than 10%.
Level 5	Fully autonomous decision-making where engineers input product specifications and entire subsystems are created automatically	Full Autonomous Design : end-to-end subsystems are created from high-level product specifications with no human intervention. Predefined automation gives way to autonomous systems that learn, explore, and make decisions to meet complex goals.

The transition to autonomous AI agents aims to enable engineers to focus on activities that differentiate products and accelerate time-to-market, transforming the traditional chip design process from manual workflows to AI-orchestrated automation.