As the semiconductor industry grapples with the growing energy demands of artificial intelligence, Cyient Semiconductors is repositioning itself away from being a primarily semiconductor engineering and ASIC services provider and toward a more product-oriented hybrid model centered on intelligent power and proprietary semiconductor products.
In a recent interview with DIGITIMES Asia, Cyient Semiconductors CEO Suman Narayan outlined the company's strategic roadmap following Cyient Semiconductors' US$85 million acquisition of a majority stake in Kinetic Technologies, a US-based supplier of power management and mixed-signal semiconductor solutions.
The transaction adds more than 250 products and over 100 silicon-proven IPs to Cyient Semiconductors' portfolio, and marks a major step in the company's push beyond traditional semiconductor services toward application-specific standard products (ASSPs) and intelligent power semiconductors targeting AI infrastructure, industrial systems, and edge computing markets.
"Power efficiency is becoming an important, maybe very important, factor for compute performance," Narayan said. "If you look at AI electrification or industrial intelligence, they're all fundamentally constrained by some sort of power delivery or energy efficiency. Power is becoming the new compute bottleneck."
Credit: DIGITIMES Asia
The 8,000-amp challenge
Narayan said the acquisition was driven by the "unprecedented power density challenges" emerging in AI infrastructure. As next-generation AI processors continue to climb in power consumption, efficiently delivering electricity through increasingly complex power conversion stages has become a growing challenge for data center operators.
Narayan said future AI accelerator systems could require delivering as much as 8,000 amps at the rack level, significantly increasing the importance of power management and DC-to-DC conversion efficiency.
Kinetic's portfolio in DC-to-DC conversion, protection circuits, display power, and interface solutions enables Cyient Semiconductors to expand beyond traditional ASIC design services into application-specific standard products. The company is now positioning itself around a hybrid ASIC-ASSP model that combines turnkey custom silicon development with standardized semiconductor offerings.
"We'll continue to provide ASIC services, and we'll continue to provide ASSP services because I feel like a lot of the IP can be leveraged to make better ASICs for our customers," Narayan said.
Kinetic's cumulative shipment volume of roughly 3 billion port-protection devices could also improve Cyient Semiconductors' negotiating leverage with foundry and packaging partners, potentially enhancing competitiveness for turnkey semiconductor engagements.
The acquisition also aligns with Cyient Semiconductors' previously outlined roadmap, emphasizing intelligent power ICs for AI data centers. In an earlier interview with DIGITIMES Asia, Narayan described how modern AI systems increasingly require multi-stage voltage conversion architectures, stepping down from roughly 800V to sub-1V rails, with efficiency losses accumulating at every stage.
Edge to grid: a two-pronged roadmap
Cyient Semiconductors' technical roadmap now follows a two-pronged strategy centered on edge AI and grid-side power conversion.
On the edge side, Cyient Semiconductors plans to deploy Kinetic's 48V-down conversion technologies for laptops, edge servers, and distributed inference systems. Narayan said he expects the shift of AI inference workloads toward edge devices to significantly increase compute deployment and the number of required power rails.
On the infrastructure side, Cyient Semiconductors is expanding internal development around grid-side power conversion, focusing on high-voltage power delivery architectures that step down from 800V or 400V into lower-voltage DC systems.
Narayan argued that future AI infrastructure will increasingly require "software-aware power systems" capable of orchestrating power dynamically across distributed computing environments through intelligent controllers and advanced monitoring systems.
The company's emphasis on intelligent power also complements its strategic partnership with Navitas Semiconductor, announced in late 2025, to help establish a Gallium Nitride (GaN) ecosystem in India. The partnership focuses on co-developing GaN-based products, mixed-signal ICs, and high-power solutions targeting AI data centers, industrial electrification, energy infrastructure, and electric mobility.
Narayan compared the current state of the GaN market to the early development stages of power MOSFET suppliers such as onsemi and Fairchild Semiconductor, viewing GaN as a long-term strategic opportunity for next-generation power efficiency.
Building India's semiconductor identity
Cyient Semiconductors is also developing a range of internal initiatives aimed at building India-specific semiconductor capabilities and reducing long-term system costs.
Projects highlighted by Narayan include:
• Azimuth, focused on developing India-specific products that reduce bill-of-materials costs by decreasing reliance on expensive catalog components;
• Inbrain, which continues Cyient Semiconductors' specialized ASIC work for medical equipment;
• Suchi, an initiative designed to leverage emerging Indian OSAT providers benefiting from government semiconductor subsidies.
The company has repeatedly framed its broader mission around transforming India from what Narayan described as a "service nation" into a "product nation."
Narayan said India accounts for roughly 20% to 30% of the global semiconductor design talent pool, but argued much of that workforce currently functions as an outsourced extension of multinational semiconductor firms rather than participating in indigenous product development.
Cyient Semiconductors aims to bridge that gap by building proprietary IP portfolios, expanding local semiconductor expertise, and combining India's engineering scale with global manufacturing ecosystems.
Taiwan: ecosystem partner, not just manufacturer
Despite its India-centric narrative, Taiwan remains central to Cyient Semiconductors' manufacturing and ecosystem strategy.
The company has previously identified Taiwan as a "mission-critical" market, relying heavily on partnerships with foundries such as TSMC and OSAT providers, including Greatek. Cyient Semiconductors has also been building relationships with Taiwanese power supply companies and expanding local support capabilities.
Looking ahead, Narayan said Cyient Semiconductors is actively exploring further M&A opportunities in Taiwan, particularly in areas such as BCD technologies, MCUs, and Analog/RF, which the company views as important ecosystem gaps.
Drawing comparisons to Japanese and Korean firms such as Suzuki and Hyundai Motor Company that successfully localized operations in India, Narayan said Cyient Semiconductors is open to joint ventures and partnership structures with Taiwanese companies interested in expanding into the Indian semiconductor ecosystem.
"We see that this acquisition is a little more than just a portfolio expansion," Narayan said. "Taiwan is the ecosystem where we want to build a very strong partnership."
Article edited by Jack Wu
