Siemens Agrees to Buy Debugging Specialist Lauterbach to Extend Its Chip-Design Software

The deal gives Siemens a way to test chip hardware and the software that runs on it together, before the physical silicon exists. That matters to chip designers and carmakers because AI accelerators, software-defined vehicles and safety-critical automotive systems increasingly depend on software and hardware being developed in parallel, and bugs found after a chip is manufactured are expensive to fix.

Lauterbach, based in Hoehenkirchen near Munich, sells hardware-assisted debuggers and real-time trace tools for microprocessors and embedded processor cores under the TRACE32 brand. The company was co-founded by brothers Lothar and Stephan Lauterbach beginning in 1979, employs about 170 people and generated revenue of roughly €60 million in 2025, according to Siemens. It has more than 1,200 customers in industries including automotive, semiconductors and telecommunications, and offices in the UK, Italy, France, Tunisia, the US East and West Coasts, Japan and China.

Siemens plans to combine Lauterbach's debug and trace tools with its own hardware-assisted verification systems, which chipmakers use to emulate designs before they go to manufacturing. The company said the combination would give customers a single view of how a chip and its software behave, and that it expects "significant" revenue synergies. Many customers already use products from both companies, the release said.

"With Lauterbach, we are further extending our industry-leading EDA portfolio for semiconductor design," said Cedrik Neike, a member of the Siemens managing board and head of its Digital Industries business. Siemens called the target "a remarkable success story, written in Germany for the global semiconductor industry."

Stephan Lauterbach, the company's chief technology officer and co-founder, said: "The increasing convergence of hardware and software development is fundamentally changing the industry." He and Thomas Ullmann will continue to work in the business as part of Siemens after the deal closes.

The acquisition is small next to Siemens, which reported revenue of €78.9 billion and net income of €10.4 billion in its 2025 financial year. It fits a push by the Munich-based group to build a broader suite of software for designing and testing advanced semiconductors, a market dominated by the US companies Synopsys and Cadence. Siemens entered chip-design software with its purchase of Mentor Graphics in 2017 and describes semiconductors as a core vertical in its technology strategy.

The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2027, subject to customary conditions and regulatory approvals.