Co-founder Manu Gulati's Nuvia sells to Qualcomm for $1.4 billion
This week Qualcomm announced it will buy computer chip start-up Nuvia for $1.4 billion. Nuvia’s products will improve the performance and power efficiency of Qualcomm’s central processing units to meet the rising demand of Fifth Generation (5G) mobile computing, Qualcomm stated.
Nuvia is seeking to build a server processor and energy-efficient system on a chip (SoC) that offers “a new way to get the performance needed to power the next generation of cloud and enterprise computing,” said Gerard Williams III, chief executive. SoC’s bundle enhances both processing power and memory, key components needed for digital devices, into one product.
Qualcomm will integrate Nuvia’s products with its own and offer them to vendors of smartphones, laptops, digital aircraft cockpits, automobile driver assistance systems, extended reality and infrastructure networking solutions.
"5G, the convergence of computing and mobile architectures, and the expansion of mobile technologies into other industries are significant opportunities for Qualcomm," said Cristiano Amon, President of Qualcomm. "The NUVIA team are proven innovators and…have a strong heritage in creating leading technology and products.”
San Diego based Qualcomm, whose chips power Samsung, LG, Xiaomi and other cellphones, has a market value of $180 billion. Samsung, Microsoft, Google, General Motors, Sony, Panasonic and other Qualcomm customers support its purchase of Nuvia.
Nuvia was founded in 2019 by John Bruno, Manu Gulati and Gerard Williams, former Apple colleagues. That year it raised $53 million in a first round of funding.
In September 2020, Nuvia raised $240 million in a second round of venture funding led by Mithril Capital, Dell Technologies Capital, Fidelity Management, Temasek, the Singapore state pension fund, and Mayfield. Based in Santa Clara, California, Nuvia has over 200 employees.
Gulati, 50 years old, is the senior vice president of Silicon Engineering at NUVIA. Earlier, he was the lead System on a Chip (SoC) architect for consumer hardware at Google.
Before Google, Gulati spent eight years at Apple as the lead SoC architect responsible for numerous Apple mobile devices, with key roles in developing chips for the iPad and iPhones. He also worked at Broadcom India Research for over nine years, in a range of senior engineering roles. He started his career at AMD, another chip maker, and 8x8.
Gulati earned an electrical engineering degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and a certification - Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer - from University of California, Irvine. He holds over 58 issued patents to date.
Gulati is unique among Indian American engineers in the Silicon Valley since he is a hardware expert while most others specialize in software.