Cirrus Logic made rival bid for Synaptics, Bloomberg reports

Chipmaker Cirrus Logic made a surprise offer for Synaptics last month, trying to break up its agreed sale to Onsemi, Liana Baker and Yiqin Shen reported for Bloomberg .

Cirrus Logic is the ‘Party A’ named in an updated Synaptics filing on Thursday, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. It is unclear whether Cirrus is still interested.

Onsemi agreed to buy Synaptics in June in an all-stock deal then valued at about $7bn.

Cirrus Logic’s bid used cash and shares. In response, Onsemi changed its offer last week to $123 a share, all in cash, which values the deal at about $5.7bn.

Onsemi said at the time that it had acted after an “unsolicited competing proposal”, without naming the bidder.

The filing shows Synaptics’ board took the Cirrus bid seriously and held talks. It decided Onsemi’s revised offer was better for shareholders.

Synaptics makes chips for touch, display and connected devices. Onsemi wants the deal to push into chips for smart devices.

Cirrus Logic, best known for audio chips in iPhones, has a market value of about $5.4bn, a little more than Synaptics’ $4.8bn. Its shares fell about 6% on Friday.

Cirrus Logic and Onsemi declined to comment to Bloomberg. The Onsemi deal is expected to close by mid-2027.