Silicon Labs Acquires Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Business from Redpine Signals

Silicon Labs has reached an agreement with Redpine Signals to acquire the company's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth business, including a development center in Hyderabad, India, and its patent portfolio, for $308 million.

The company said the technology will accelerate Silicon Labs' Wi-Fi 6 chip and software roadmap. The acquisition also includes Bluetooth Classic IP for audio applications (including extended data rate), which can be applied to wearables, audio devices, voice assistants and smart speakers.

The acquisition includes a large-scale design center with about 200 employees in Hyderabad, India. Silicon Labs said Redpine's multidisciplinary team will help it scale R&D faster and more efficiently.

Silicon Labs expects the transaction to add approximately $20 million in incremental revenue per year and approximately $15 million in non-GAAP operating expenses per year.

The boards of directors of both companies and Redpine Signals' shareholders have approved the transaction, which is expected to close in the second quarter of 2020, subject to customary closing conditions. JPMorgan Chase will serve as Redpine Signals' exclusive financial advisor.

"The acquisition of Redpine Signals' ultra-low power Wi-Fi and Bluetooth products and broad intellectual property portfolio will expand our leadership in wireless technologies for the IoT," said Tyson Tuttle, CEO

of Silicon Labs. "Backed by two decades of advanced research in OFDM and MIMO systems, Redpine has created a wide range of differentiated products, including low-power, multi-protocol SoCs," said Venkat Mattela, founder and CEO of Redpine Signals. "Looking ahead, low-power Wi-Fi 6 will be a key wireless technology for IoT device connectivity."

Founded in 2001, Redpine Signals is headquartered in San Jose, California, although most of its development team is in India. The company has developed a number of ultra-low power, high-performance wireless and microcontroller (MCU) products. It claims to have been the first in the industry to launch an ultra-low power single-stream 802.11n chipset in late 2007, and was also the first to adopt a self-contained 802.11abgn module in the emerging IoT market in 2009. In 2013, the company introduced a multi-protocol wireless chipset with dual-band WiFi, dual-mode BT 4.1, and ZigBee. Redpine's third-generation chipset integrates eight wireless protocols on a single chip at 40nm. Redpine has an extensive patent portfolio covering OFDM, MIMO, embedded processor architectures, and low-power technologies, and its technology and product portfolio includes chipsets,