U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm QCOM-Q agreed to acquire Canadian-founded Alphawave IP Group PLC AWEVF for about US$2.4-billion on Monday, as it expands into the booming AI data centre market, sending shares of the semiconductor company up by almost a quarter.

Alphawave, which is domiciled in the U.K. but managed out of North America, is the latest British company to be snapped up in a market plagued by low valuations and stunted growth, with U.S. buyers swooping on firms at comparatively low prices and better-performing bourses proving more attractive for share listings.

Alphawave shareholders will receive 183 pence per share – a near 96 per cent premium to the March 31 closing price immediately before Qualcomm disclosed its interest. News of the deal sent the stock up more than 22 per cent. Shares of Qualcomm rose about 4 per cent.

Jefferies analysts said they do not expect the deal to meet any material regulatory obstacles, after Alphawave exited its Chinese joint venture, WiseWave, on Monday.

Qualcomm also made two alternative all-share offers for Alphawave on Monday after multiple deadline extensions from the U.K. takeover panel. However, Alphawave plans to unanimously recommend the cash offer to its shareholders, deeming it fair and reasonable.

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Alphawave, which designs semiconductor tech for data centres, networking and storage, is a strategic buy for Qualcomm, which announced its return to the data centre CPU market in May.

“Alphawave has developed leading high-speed wired connectivity and compute technologies that are complementary to our power-efficient central processing unit (CPU) and neural processing unit (NPU) cores,” Cristiano Amon, president and CEO of Qualcomm, said.

Alphawave also garnered takeover interest in April from SoftBank-owned Arm for its ‘serdes’ tech, which boosts chip data-processing speeds – key for AI development – and underpins Broadcom’s and Marvell Technology’s multibillion-dollar custom chip businesses.

Alphawave was founded in 2017 by a trio of Toronto entrepreneurs who previously built and sold two semiconductor companies: CEO Tony Pialis, senior vice-president of engineering Jonathan Rogers and Raj Mahadevan.

They took the company public on the London Stock Exchange in April, 2021, when technology companies were riding a wave of heightened valuations during the COVID-19 tech bubble. Other senior leaders of the profitable, 930-person company are largely split between Toronto and the San Francisco Bay Area. According to LinkedIn, most of the company’s employees live in India, which roughly one-third based in Toronto.

“Qualcomm’s acquisition of Alphawave Semi represents a significant milestone for us and an opportunity for our business to join forces with a respected industry leader and drive value to our customers,” Mr. Pialis said in a statement.

“By combining our resources and expertise, we will be well-positioned to expand our product offerings, reach a broader customer base, and enhance our technological capabilities. Together, we will unlock new opportunities for growth, drive innovation, and create a leading player in AI compute and connectivity solutions.”

Arm walked away after initial discussions with Alphawave, Reuters exclusively reported in April citing sources.

With files from Sean Silcoff