Synopsys (SNPS.US) teamed up with OpenAI to develop an AI model for chip design. The revenue sharing model boosted the stock price by 7%

The Zhitong Finance App learned that chip design software manufacturer Synopsys (SNPS.US) announced on Wednesday that it has reached a cooperation agreement with OpenAI. The two sides will jointly develop AI models for the chip business and share related revenue. The model, called GPT-Synopsys, will be specially trained and tuned to take on chip design tasks. The chip design process usually starts with describing the chip circuit in code-like language and extends to how to lay out billions of transistors on tiny silicon wafers.

OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman said in the video announcing the news that the OpenAI model will learn how to use Synopsys' software tools to help engineers handle various trade-offs and optimizations in the chip design process, “thereby shortening the design process by weeks and months, and bringing more chips to the world.”

Synopsys announced the deal at an investor summit. Company CEO Sassine Ghazi said on the same day that Synopsys currently expects revenue growth of 15% for the 2027 fiscal year, which is higher than analysts' expectations of 11.19% according to LSEG data. Synopsys shares rose 7% at one point after the announcement of the partnership and financial estimates.

In an interview with Reuters, Ghazi said that OpenAI will pay Synopsys training subscriptions to learn how to use Synopsys tools. As Synopsys customers use the product, Synopsys and OpenAI will share revenue based on how much the model improves the chip design. Ghazi said, “We designed an agreement structure that won't eat away at our business. As we deliver more value to our customers, this will be an upside factor for our business.”

However, Ghazi also stressed that GPT-Synopsys' work will still be reviewed by Synopsys using traditional computing technology tools to verify whether the chip works properly. He said, “The model needed these guardrails to check the physics. Verification with the highest degree of fidelity, or what we call a signature or actual ground value, is critical.”

The core significance of this deal is that AI is further penetrating from the general model to the EDA (Electronic Design Automation) field upstream of the semiconductor industry chain. Chip design is highly complex, involving various aspects from circuit description, logic synthesis, layout and wiring to physical verification. Engineers need to repeatedly balance performance, power consumption, area, and cost. If the AI model can learn and use Synopsys tools to automatically complete some optimizations and trade-offs, it can theoretically significantly shorten the design cycle and reduce the cost of trial and error.

Looking at the business model, the collaboration between Synopsys and OpenAI is not a simple software license, but a combination of “training subscription fee+revenue share”. OpenAI first pays to learn how to use Synopsys tools; when Synopsys customers use GPT-Synopsys, the two parties are then divided according to the degree of improvement in the chip design of the model. This pay-for-performance model helps reduce customer concerns about the uncertain value of AI tools, and also binds OpenAI's interests to Synopsys' actual benefits. However, the two parties did not disclose key details such as sharing ratios, exclusive arrangements, and how to use customer design data, which will be the focus of future market attention.