Since Renesas Electronics completed its acquisition of Altium for $5.91 billion in 2024, there has been significant interest in whether this PCB design software company can deliver on its growth commitments made at the time of acquisition, supported by the semiconductor giant. After all, this transaction came at a notable premium, exceeding Autodesk’s $3.9 billion offer years ago, which raised market expectations.
Before the acquisition, Altium was already a rapidly growing software company. In the fiscal year 2023, its revenue reached $263 million, a year-on-year increase of 19.2%; in the first half of fiscal year 2024, it continued to achieve $138.6 million in revenue, a year-on-year increase of 15.9%. This performance led the market to generally believe that Renesas’s resource integration would further amplify its growth rate.
However, based on the financial report disclosures, the reality has not accelerated as the market had envisioned. In the second quarter earnings call for 2025, Renesas CEO Hidetoshi Shibata stated: “Regarding Altium, I believe there has not been much change overall in the past year… Of course, our goal is to achieve positive growth… We are transforming and hope to share this progress next year. So, I believe we want to move towards accelerated growth from now on.”
From the announcement at the time of the acquisition, Renesas emphasized that the transaction “would enhance earnings per share even without considering synergies,” and aimed to build a platform covering electronic system design to lifecycle management as the integration goal. The market was anticipating that Altium would quickly accelerate after the acquisition based on this commitment. However, the facts indicate that the integration of software and semiconductors is not instantaneous: from the technical integration of the toolchain to the reshaping of sales channels and the implementation of joint solutions, it typically requires a cycle of 12 to 24 months.
Nevertheless, the strategic transformation post-acquisition has begun to show results. At the beginning of 2025, Renesas officially launched the Renesas 365 platform. This solution, driven by Altium 365 technology, deeply integrates Renesas’s product matrix in embedded computing, analog connectivity, and power management with Altium’s cloud collaboration architecture, achieving full lifecycle management from silicon to system. According to Renesas, this model can shorten the product time-to-market by 30% and enhance compliance and traceability.
The launch of Renesas 365 is considered the first milestone achievement post-acquisition, addressing external doubts about the high-premium acquisition and allowing the “commitment” to begin transitioning from paper to reality. It indicates that Renesas is not merely looking to increase revenue through Altium but is seeking to complete a transformation from “chip” to “design-as-a-service.”