Siemens is to acquire design automation and industrial software provider Mentor Graphics in a $4.5bn deal.
This brings Mentor’s chip and system design tools such as Calibre and ModelSim as well as the Nucleus real time operating system into Siemens’ Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) software business.
The deal also includes the Xpedition PCB tools (above), the mixed signal chip design tools under the Tanner brand and the FloTherm thermal analysis software.
This means Siemens’ Digital Factory (DF) Division becomes a unique digital industrial player with mechanical, thermal, electrical, electronic and embedded software design capabilities on a single integrated PLM platform.
"Siemens is acquiring Mentor as part of its Vision 2020 concept to be the Benchmark for the New Industrial Age. It's a perfect portfolio fit to further expand our digital leadership and set the pace in the industry," said Joe Kaeser, President and CEO of Siemens.
"With Mentor, we're acquiring an established technology leader with a talented employee base that will allow us to supplement our world-class industrial software portfolio. It will complement our strong offering in mechanics and software with design, test and simulation of electrical and electronic systems," said Klaus Helmrich, member of the Managing Board of Siemens. “By adding Mentor's electronic design automation solutions and talented experts to our team, we're greatly enhancing our core competencies for product design that creates a very precise digital twin of any smart product and production line.”
Mentor has more than 5,700 employees with revenue of $1.2bn from 14,000 customers across the communications, computer, consumer electronics, semiconductor, networking, aerospace, multimedia and transportation industries.
"Combining Mentor's technology leadership and deep customer relationships with Siemens' global scale and resources will better enable us to serve the growing needs of our customers, and unlock additional significant opportunities for our employees," said Wally Rhines, chairman and CEO of Mentor. "Siemens is an ideal partner with financial depth and stability, and their resources and additional investment will allow us to innovate even faster and accelerate our vision of creating top-to-bottom automated design solutions for electronic systems."
The deal is expected to close by June next year when Mentor will be part of the PLM software business of Siemens' DF Division.