OpenAI and Synopsys have entered into a multi-year strategic partnership to develop GPT-Synopsys, a specialized AI model designed to operate semiconductor design tools and automate increasingly complex chip engineering workflows.
The partnership combines OpenAI’s frontier AI models with Synopsys’ electronic design automation technology and semiconductor engineering expertise.
OpenAI will license Synopsys’ EDA tools as part of development, while the companies will collaborate on research and development, go-to-market activities and a shared revenue framework.
GPT-Synopsys is being designed to reason about semiconductor design and verification while directly interacting with Synopsys tools.
The companies envision engineers assigning design objectives such as power, performance and area optimization, timing closure and verification closure to AI agents.
Those agents would run EDA tools, interpret results, make design changes and iterate toward verified outcomes that engineers can review.
The system will run on OpenAI-hosted infrastructure and is expected to integrate with customer agent harness systems, Synopsys.ai and the Synopsys Autopilot agentic AI platform.
OpenAI and Synopsys said early technology engagements are already underway with semiconductor customers.
The joint offering will bundle compute, model access and software licenses.
GPT-Synopsys is also being designed with enterprise security, governance and access controls. Customer design information will not be used to train the model and will be encrypted in transit and at rest, with configurable retention, audit and permission settings.
The companies see the technology as a way to allow semiconductor engineers to evaluate more design alternatives and accelerate time to working silicon without compromising design performance or verification rigor.
KEY QUOTES:
“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. 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.”
Sassine Ghazi, President and CEO of Synopsys
“We’re using our most advanced technology to improve the systems that power AI. 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.”
Greg Brockman, President and Co-Founder of OpenAI
