By Svea Herbst-Bayliss
NEW YORK, May 27 (Reuters) – Chip design software maker Synopsys has reached an agreement with activist investor Elliott Investment Management that will give one board seat to the activist investor’s managing partner Jesse Cohn, the company said on Wednesday.
The board is being expanded to 11 members with the appointment of Cohn, who will also join the board’s corporate governance and nominating committee, it added.
Synopsys, which has a market valuation of about $100 billion and counts Tesla and Google parent Alphabet among its customers, has held discussions with Elliott, one of the industry’s most powerful activists, for roughly two months.
“Synopsys is essential to the global chip industry and is well-positioned to benefit from increasing AI investment and engineering complexity,” Cohn said in a statement.
Elliott, which has a history of successful investments at technology and semiconductor companies, pushed the company to improve its margins, and Synopsys’ stock price has climbed roughly 20% since Elliott’s involvement became public. The hedge fund built a multi-billion-dollar investment in the company, sources familiar with the matter said.
Industry analysts have said Synopsys is essential to the semiconductor industry but noted its shares have lagged the SMH semiconductor index since November 2022 when ChatGPT was released. Global chip sales hit a record $792 billion in 2025 and are on track to top $1 trillion in 2026.
Elliott has suggested there is room for Synopsys to improve margins and financial execution that would bring its numbers closer in line with Cadence Design Systems. Cadence and Synopsys are the dominant duopoly in the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) market, controlling the software and intellectual property used to design virtually all modern semiconductors.
Sunnyvale, California-based Synopsys has for decades been one of the main suppliers to Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia and others of software used in determining how to arrange the tens of billions of transistors that make up semiconductor chips.
Synopsys appointed Sassine Ghazi as CEO in January 2024 and he will announce earnings on Wednesday.
Cohn is a managing partner at Elliott, along with Gordon Singer, who is founder Paul Singer’s son. Together, they manage Elliott’s Investment Committee. The hedge fund oversees some $80 billion in assets.
Cohn has expertise in technology investing and in March 2020 joined the Twitter board. He left the board after having developed a blueprint for changes that led to a doubling of the social media firm’s share price before it was bought by Elon Musk and rebranded as X. He also previously sat on the boards of Citrix, eBay and athenahealth.
“As an experienced board member, Jesse brings a uniquely differentiated perspective,” said Aart de Geus, executive chair and co-founder of Synopsys.
(Reporting by Svea Herbst-Bayliss; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Franklin Paul)
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