SYNOPSYS INC

Synopsys was founded by Aart de Geus, David Gregory, Alberto Sangiovanni-Vincentelli and Bill Krieger in 1986 in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The company was initially established as Optimal Solutions with a charter to develop and market logic synthesis technology developed by the team at General Electric 's Advanced Computer-Aided Engineering Group. The company changed its name to Synopsys and moved to Mountain View, California in 1987. It became a public company through an initial public offering in February 1992, opening on NASDAQ at $7.13 a share and closing on the first trading day at $7.88. 2 million shares were offered; the company offered 1.55 million shares and stockholders offered 450,000 shares.

In 2006, the company built a supercomputer for EDA applications using commodity Linux servers and off-the-shelf hardware that was listed on the TOP500 as the 242nd most powerful computer, based on results on the LINPACK benchmark.

Synopsys has been a constituent of the Nasdaq-100 and S&P 500 indices since 2017.

Synopsys engineers began developing reinforcement learning applications for electronic design automation in 2017, which led to the introduction of the DSO.ai (design-space optimization) product for digital chip implementation in 2020, followed by a series of AI tools for IC verification and test, as well as other applications. In 2023, Synopsys announced the Copilot product in collaboration with Microsoft that leveraged large language models from OpenAI to assist in chip design. (For more information, see #Adoption of AI technologies.)

In August 2023, Synopsys named COO Sassine Ghazi as CEO. Ghazi succeeded Aart de Geus in January 2024, with de Geus transitioning to the role of executive chairman.

On July 17, 2025, Synopsys completed its acquisition of Ansys, a global provider of engineering simulation software. The transaction, first announced on January 16, 2024, was valued at approximately $35 billion, making it the largest acquisition in Synopsys’ history. Several media outlets described the deal as one of the largest transactions in the engineering and software industry. The merger combines Synopsys’ EDA dominance with Ansys’ multiphysics simulation expertise, promising a new era of co-optimized chip and system design In November 2025, it was reported that Synopsys planned to lay off about 10% of its workforce and close certain locations as part of a restructure following the acquisition of Ansys. The layoffs will largely take place during fiscal year 2026.