Companies form strategic partnership to dramatically advance and accelerate semiconductor innovation

News Highlights:

• Companies sign multi-year agreement to collaborate as preferred partners to develop and deliver GPT-Synopsys, a specialized model for chip design that brings together OpenAI's frontier AI with Synopsys' trusted EDA tools and chip design expertise
• OpenAI to license Synopsys' trusted electronic design automation (EDA) tools for development of the specialized model
• Synopsys & OpenAI to closely collaborate on R&D and joint go-to-market initiatives with a shared revenue framework

SAN FRANCISCO and SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 30, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Synopsys (Nasdaq: SNPS) and OpenAI today announced a strategic partnership that brings together OpenAI's advanced AI capabilities with Synopsys' industry-leading EDA tools and agentic AI capabilities to revolutionize the design of semiconductors. The companies signed an expansive, multi-year agreement to jointly develop GPT-Synopsys, a specialized model, optimized to use Synopsys EDA tools to perform semiconductor design workflows. The agreement includes a revenue sharing arrangement and go-to-market collaboration to jointly make GPT-Synopsys available to customers worldwide.

Today, agentic AI technologies connect general-purpose models to EDA tools to run chip-design workflows. The next leap, with this partnership, is to make frontier models experts in using EDA tools: learning to run the tools as expert engineers, interpreting their outputs, and iteratively optimizing designs using the tools. This integration will make the model a native expert user and enable engineers to explore more design alternatives and optimize power, performance and area (PPA) to rapidly deliver more sophisticated designs.

"The future of semiconductor engineering requires dramatic acceleration of the chip design process without compromising PPA or first-time-right silicon. This agreement will expand access to Synopsys' advanced design capabilities and the underlying, ground-truth engineering tools required to bring increasingly complex chips to market," said Sassine Ghazi, president and CEO of Synopsys. "Together with OpenAI, we're bringing frontier intelligence to chip design to help more companies develop and accelerate advanced silicon, while maintaining the rigor and trust required for manufacturing success."

"We're using our most advanced technology to improve the systems that power AI," said Greg Brockman, president and co-founder of OpenAI. "With Synopsys, we're bringing that work to chip design, helping engineers explore more designs and get to a working chip faster. By helping them build better chips, we can build better AI and bring it to more people."     

GPT-Synopsys to Revolutionize AI-native Chip Design

GPT-Synopsys brings together OpenAI frontier models with Synopsys' EDA technology and domain expertise, enabling the specialized model to reason about chip design and verification, and to directly operate Synopsys' tools. Engineers will delegate design objectives—from PPA optimization to timing and verification closure—with agents running tools, interpreting results, implementing changes, and iterating toward verified outcomes for engineer review. GPT-Synopsys will run on OpenAI-hosted infrastructure, will be designed to interoperate with customer agent harness systems, and will be deeply integrated with Synopsys.ai and the Synopsys Autopilot, agentic AI platform. Early technology engagements are underway with leading semiconductor customers.

The joint service offering will provide the bundled compute, model, and licenses, while ensuring customer-specific design data is protected. GPT-Synopsys will feature enterprise-grade security, governance, and access controls. Customer data is not used to train the model, is encrypted at rest and in transit, and can be managed through configurable retention, audit and permission controls.

About Synopsys

Synopsys, Inc. (Nasdaq: SNPS) is the leader in engineering solutions from silicon to systems, enabling customers to rapidly innovate AI-powered products. We deliver industry-leading silicon design, IP, simulation and analysis solutions, and design services. We partner closely with customers across a broad range of industries to maximize their R&D capability and productivity, powering innovation today that ignites the ingenuity of tomorrow. Learn more at www.synopsys.com.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including, but not limited to, statements regarding the development, capabilities, timing, availability, and anticipated benefits of GPT-Synopsys as well as Synopsys and OpenAI's strategic partnership. These statements involve risks, uncertainties and other factors that could cause our actual results, time frames, or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied in such forward-looking statements. Information on potential risks, uncertainties and other factors that could affect Synopsys' results is included in filings we make with the SEC from time to time, including in the sections entitled "Risk Factors" in our latest Annual Report on Form 10-K and in our latest Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q. Synopsys undertakes no duty, and does not intend, to update any forward-looking statement provided in this press release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless required by law.

Contacts:

Synopsys Investor Relations
Tushar Jain
[email protected] 

Synopsys Media Relations
Cara Walker 
[email protected]
[email protected]  

SOURCE Synopsys, Inc.