SiTime Acquires Aura Semi’s Clock Products and Licenses Clock IP

SiTime Acquires Aura Semiconductor's Clock Products

SiTime, a leading provider of timing solutions, has announced its acquisition of the clock products of Aura Semiconductor. In addition to this, SiTime will also license all of Aura's clock intellectual property (IP) in an all-cash transaction. The deal includes fixed payments totaling $148 million, with potential earnouts capped at $120 million.

"SiTime's vision is to transform all categories of the $10 billion timing market," said Rajesh Vashist, CEO and chairman of SiTime. "Since our IPO in 2019, our focus has been on solving the most difficult problems in the oscillator category, and that has paid off. We have experienced significant growth, expanding our product range from 60 to 150 unique offerings. The price of our highest-value oscillator has also grown tenfold. With this acquisition, we are now bringing our expertise to the category of clocks, adding 20 best-in-class clocks immediately, and another 20 by the end of 2024."

Vashist further explained, "We have leveraged our strong balance sheet to accelerate our clocking revenue, while also increasing our oscillator revenue. These clocks have higher gross margins than our corporate target and are designed to be used with our Elite TCXO and Epoch OCXO families. Previously, customers had to deal with separate Clock and Oscillator vendors. However, SiTime will now offer both categories, standalone and engineered to be optimized with each other, for our core markets of communications, datacenter, and AI. This deal significantly advances our vision, making us the only provider with complete and differentiated precision timing products."

SiTime will have exclusive, perpetual, and irrevocable rights to sell existing and new products based on Aura's IP and clocking portfolio. The fixed payments will be made in three installments: $36 million at close, $75 million in 2024, and $37 million in 2025. These payments are tied to product deliveries from Aura.

In addition to the fixed payments, there will be earnout payments based on revenue generated from the acquired products between 2023 and 2028. The earnout payments will be calculated using various multiples. As part of the transaction, SiTime will also be opening an office in Bengaluru, India, which will house an engineering and support team.