Most Read articles – Arm suing Qualcomm, Semiconductor megadeals, Renesas buying Steradian

What are the topics covered? There’s the CEO of Britishvolt resigning, megadeals in the semiconductor industry, Honda and LG building an EV battery plant, Arm suing Qualcomm for breach of contract and Renesas buying Steradian Semiconductors…

5. Britishvolt CEO resigns
UK EV battery startup Britishvolt had announced the resignation of co-founder and CEO Orral Nadjari. A previous co-founder, Britishvolt chairman Lars Carlstrom, resigned in 2020 after it was found he had a tax fraud conviction in Sweden. Deputy CEO Graham Hoare will become acting CEO. Britishvolt has just been granted £100 million by the governments Automotive Transformation Fund.

4. Four megadeals boost 2022 M&A total
After slowing significantly in the last half of 2021, the pace of megadeals for semiconductor mergers and acquisitions regained momentum in the first six months of 2022, according to IC Insights’ August 3Q Update of The McClean Report service. Four big deals prop up the 2022 semiconductor M&A total, says IC Insights, and without any more of them this year’s value of planned acquisitions will probably fall short of the annual average. So far this year, four large agreements have been announced—each valued between $1.9 billion and $9.4 billion, pushing the combined 1H22 M&A total to $20.6 billion.

3. Honda and LG to build EV battery plant in Ohio
Honda and LG Are to build a jv EV battery plant in Ohio, reports the Nikkei. Construction is due to start next year with mass production in 2025. It will be Honda’s first EV battery plant. LG also has battery manufacturing jvs with GM and Stellantis.

2. Arm sues Qualcomm
Yesterday, Arm said it is suing Qualcomm for breach of contract. Arm’s lawsuit alleges that Arm-based designs by Apple spin-off Nuvia, which was bought for $1.4 billion by Qualcomm in March, cannot be legally transferred to Qualcomm without permission from Arm. Arm says Nuvia’s Arm licences were terminated in March. Arm granted Nuvia a technology licence and architecture license in 2019 allowing Nuvia to modify Arm’s off-the-shelf cores as well as design custom cores based on Arm architecture.

1. Renesas buys Steradian Semiconductors
Renesas is buying Steradian Semiconductors, a fabless semiconductor company based in Bengaluru, India, specialising in 4D imaging radar. The acquisition of Steradian’s radar technology will enable Renesas to extend its reach in the radar market and boost its automotive and industrial sensing solution offerings. With the advancements of ADAS in the automotive market, automotive sensor fusion demand is growing to allow precise and accurate object detection of vehicles’ surroundings by combining data from multiple sensors, such as cameras, radar and LiDAR.