The British chip designer Alphawave has agreed to a $2.4bn (£1.8bn) takeover by its US rival Qualcomm, the latest loss to the London Stock Exchange as it struggles to hang on to large technology companies.
Alphawave, which is one of the few semiconductor companies listed in the UK, received an offer worth 183p a share and on Monday its board recommended the deal to shareholders after months of talks.
The deal, once it receives shareholder approval, is expected to complete during the first three months of 2026, valuing Alphawave at $2.4bn.
Alphawave designs and licenses high-speed connectivity technology that can be applied in datacentres and AI applications, key areas for growth in the sector.
It is the latest in a string of high-profile technology companies that listed in London in 2021 but will leave the market due to either a takeover by a bigger US rival or have switched their listing to New York in search for better liquidity and higher valuations.
While US markets have been dominated by tech players – including the “Magnificent Seven” group of companies – in recent years, the UK can boast just a handful of large listed companies in the sector.
Last week the online payments company Wise told investors that it was planning to move its main share listing to the US. Deliveroo, the food delivery app, agreed to a £2.9bn takeover by its US rival DoorDash in May.
Last year Darktrace, the Cambridge-based cybersecurity and artificial intelligence company, agreed to a $5.3bn takeover by the US private equity business Thoma Bravo.
Companies in other sectors are also increasingly turning away from London. Last year the construction equipment rental company Ashtead announced it would move its primary listing to the US, following companies such as the gambling group Flutter Entertainment and the building materials provider CRH.
Earlier this month the drugmaker Indivior said it planned to cancel the secondary listing it had retained in London after switching its main stock listing to the US last year, and the metal investment company Cobalt Holdings scrapped its move to list in London, which was expected to have raised about $230m.
Alphawave listed in 2021 at 410p a share, but it has mostly traded well below this level since its IPO.
The chief executive of Alphawave, Tony Pialis, said the takeover represented an opportunity to “expand our product offerings, reach a broader customer base, and enhance our technological capabilities”.
Qualcomm initially told investors that it was considering making an offer in April. Since then the companies have remained in talks.
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Cristiano Amon, the chief executive of San-Diego based Qualcomm, said Alphawave had developed “leading high-speed wired connectivity and compute technologies” that were complementary to his company’s power-efficient central processing unit and neural processing unit cores.
“The combined teams share the goal of building advanced technology solutions and enabling next-level connected computing performance across a wide array of high growth areas, including datacentre infrastructure,” he said.
Under the terms of the deal, Alphawave shareholders can also opt to exchange their stock for 0.01662 of a new share in Qualcomm.
Separately on Monday, the UK quantum computing startup Oxford Ionics agreed to a $1.1bn takeover by its US rival IonQ.
Oxford Ionics, which was spun out of the University of Oxford, was founded by the physicists Chris Ballance and Tom Harty in 2019. Both founders will remain at IonQ after the acquisition is completed.
IonQ, which is listed in New York, has a market value of $9.7bn, and its shares have more than quadrupled in value over the past year alone.
