Cadence rumored to be buying CommandCAD: lots of smoke..bet there's a fire?

John Cooley posted a piece earlier this week on deepchip.com saying one of his historically reliable sources told him that Cadence is acquiring tiny EDA DFM startup CommandCAD.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my reliable sources said one of the large EDA vendors was going to buy a virtually unheard of DFM startup, which has very quietly built a cool, “game changing” DFM technology. With this background and Cooley's data, I'm compelled to believe it is indeed true. Over the years, I’ve learned that when there’s this much smoke, there’s usually a fire.

Personally, I haven’t heard much about CommandCAD because it has been in stealth mode. The company hasn’t yet officially announced itself or its tool, which according to its website is a pattern matching technology that layout engineers will use to make smart layout decisions based on different design situations.

CommandCAD appears to have an interesting pedigree with deep roots at UC Berkeley. The technology was apparently conceived by Matt Moskewicz, Chief Software Architect at CommandCAD, who is a PhD candidate at Cal. Cal prof. Kurt Keutzer is also listed as a technical advisor and investor. The company also boasts former Cadabra CEO, Martin Lefebvre as its CEO. I sent an inquiry to Cadence but haven’t heard back from them yet. It’s pretty typical that companies say “we don’t comment on rumors” in these situations.

If the “rumor” is true, it will be interesting to see whether Cadence actually announces the acquisition or tries to simply quietly slip it into its quarterly statement as an “immaterial acquisition” of an unnamed company. Over the last couple of years, Cadence has been trying to buck (or failing that has tried to appear to be bucking) the traditional growth-by-acquisition model that built it into a number one EDA vendor. Last year around this time, Cadence very quietly purchased DFM startup Praesagus but didn’t officially announce it. The acquisition however made it on an earnings statement as an immaterial acquisition (but Praesagus was not named as the company Cadence acquired). When I inquired, Cadence confirmed they acquired a company but wouldn’t tell me who they acquired. A couple of days later, I discovered it was Praesagus (and Cadence confirmed it) after I found a reference to the acquisition on the web. I haven’t found a similar reference to CommandCAD yet. We may have to wait until Cadence posts its next quarterly earnings filings with the SEC.