Siemens Acquires Defacto Technologies for SoC Design Automation

Siemens has agreed to acquire Defacto Technologies, a privately held electronic design automation (EDA) software company specializing in automated system-on-chip (SoC) design creation and integration, according to an announcement from the company. The acquisition expands Siemens' capabilities in helping semiconductor designers manage increasingly complex chip architectures through automation.

Defacto Technologies, founded in 2003 and based in Grenoble, France, develops software for register-transfer level (RTL) design that automates SoC assembly, design restructuring, and power intent management. The company's technology uses a unified, persistent design database to streamline workflows that have traditionally been manual and error-prone.

Addressing the complexity challenge

The acquisition comes as semiconductor companies shift from monolithic chip designs to chiplet-based and highly configurable SoC architectures. These newer approaches dramatically increase the number of intellectual property (IP) blocks and interconnections that must be managed, making manual assembly processes increasingly impractical.

Defacto's technology addresses this bottleneck by automating design creation earlier in the development cycle, at the RTL phase. The tools complement Siemens' existing EDA solutions by extending continuity across the entire SoC design lifecycle—from initial design creation through implementation, verification, and signoff.

"With Defacto Technologies, we strengthen our ability to help customers automate SoC design creation and establish trusted design flows earlier in the development cycle," said Ankur Gupta, executive vice president of the IC Portfolio at Siemens EDA. The combined offering supports advanced workflows for connectivity, timing constraints, and power intent processes.

Why it matters

As chips incorporate more functionality and move toward disaggregated architectures, design teams face a productivity crisis. Manual methods for assembling complex SoCs don't scale, creating bottlenecks that slow time-to-market and increase the risk of errors. Automation tools that work earlier in the design process—before implementation and verification—can help engineering teams make better architectural decisions and catch issues when they're cheaper to fix. For Siemens, the acquisition strengthens its position in a competitive EDA market where customers increasingly demand integrated tool flows that span the entire chip development lifecycle.

Chouki Aktouf, chief executive officer of Defacto Technologies, said the combination opens opportunities for customers by pairing Defacto's SoC design automation expertise with Siemens' broader EDA portfolio. The goal is to help engineering teams simplify complex workflows and accelerate innovation across the semiconductor industry.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed. Details of the transaction were first reported by Siemens in a press release.