Open-Silicon

Open-Silicon was an American semiconductor company based in California that was founded in 2003. The company was a fabless semiconductor company that focused on custom System on Chip (SoC) designs.

Open-Silicon

Industry	Semiconductors
Founded	2003 (2003)
Founders	Dr. Naveed Sherwani, Dr. Satya Gupta, Scott Houghton
Headquarters	Milpitas, California , United States
Products	ASICs, system-on-a-chip, integrated circuits
Number of employees	400 (2013)
Website	www.open-silicon.com at the Wayback Machine (archived March 17, 2009)

Open-Silicon was acquired by SiFive in September, 2021 and was renamed as OpenFive. The unit was subsequently sold by SiFive in March 2022 to Alphawave Semi.^[1]

Corporate history

Open-Silicon was founded in 2003 by Naveed Sherwani, Satya Gupta and Scott Houghton. Initial funding was provided by Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, and InterWest Partners.^[2] In December 2007 Unicorn Investment Bank acquired 75% of Open-Silicon for $190M, with the rest of the company employee-owned.^[3]

In May 2007, Open-Silicon acquired Zenasis Technologies, a maker of processor optimization EDA software.^[4] This technology has also been expanded by Open-Silicon to focus on low power design and process variability management.^[5]

In 2009 Open-Silicon acquired design services firm Silicon Logic Engineering (SLE). This acquisition has enhanced the company's derivative IC design capabilities.^[6] In 2010 the company opened new facilities in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, and Pune, India, to provide additional support for derivative IC design.

Open-Silicon's business model for its ASIC development process was called the OpenMODEL.^[7][1] In 2012, Open-Silicon acquired and grew substantial design operations in Pakistan and Taiwan.

On August 17, 2020, SiFive acquired Open-Silicon and renamed it OpenFive, an independent business unit of SiFive. On Sept. 1, 2022, Canadian semiconductor licensing company Alphawave Semi acquired SiFive’s OpenFive business unit for $210 million.