SiTime tech could go into billions of Renesas chips, SiTime CEO says

By Stephen Nellis

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb 5 (Reuters) – SiTime’s technology could eventually end up in billions of chips from Japan’s Renesas, SiTime’s chief executive said on Thursday.

SiTime’s shares closed up 17.9% on Thursday, the first day of trading after it announced a deal worth up to $3.2 billion to acquire timing assets from Renesas. SiTime said it expects the Renesas assets to generate $300 million in revenue in the first year after the deal’s anticipated close by the end of 2026, which will nearly double the $326.7 million in sales SiTime had in fiscal 2025.

In addition to buying Renesas assets, SiTime’s deal will also bring Renesas CEO Hidetoshi Shibata onto SiTime’s board of directors and includes an agreement by Renesas to integrate some of SiTime’s timing technology into its chips.

The SiTime technology Renesas will integrate, called a resonator, is smaller and more resistant to temperature swings than competing technologies, which will make it suitable for automotive chips, a key market for Renesas microcontrollers.

SiTime CEO Rajesh Vashist told Reuters the resulting chips will be the first microcontrollers on the market that do not need any external timing components to operate.

“It’ll probably be a little while before it shows up in revenue for us, let’s say at least a couple of years, because designing it in, qualifying it, getting it out, selling it, takes time,” Vashist said. “I think this could turn out to be billions of units that will be integrated in this way.” 

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Chris Reese)