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OpenAI and Synopsys partner to build "GPT-Synopsys" for autonomous chip design
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OpenAI and Synopsys have signed a multi-year agreement to jointly develop GPT-Synopsys, a specialized model optimized for semiconductor design using Synopsys's electronic design automation (EDA) tools. According to the September 30 announcement, the partnership “brings together OpenAI's advanced AI capabilities with Synopsys's industry-leading EDA tools and agentic AI capabilities to revolutionize the design of semiconductors.”
Engineers would delegate to agents that run the tools and execute the required processes until the work is ready for review. The companies say this would allow design teams to evaluate more options and deliver more sophisticated chips. Under the preferred partner agreement, OpenAI is licensing Synopsys's tools to develop the model — which will run on OpenAI-hosted infrastructure — after which the companies will jointly release the product and share revenue. The announcement did not disclose a release date or a pricing structure.
Engineers use EDA tools to design and verify chips before manufacturing. This multi-step process begins with writing the hardware description in register-transfer level (RTL) code and using synthesis software to convert it into logic gates. Next, physical design tools lay out the circuit elements and route the connections between them. Lastly, designers close timing, verify functionality, and ensure manufacturing compliance before tapeout for fabrication.
Each of these stages requires several iterations — repeatedly running various tools and troubleshooting issues — to balance critical trade-offs: power, performance, and silicon area (PPA). Synopsys, Cadence, and Siemens EDA have dominated this market for these tools long before the current AI boom. Given the technology's capabilities, it is only natural that AI has found its way into the chip design process, creating a sort of “silicon designing silicon” loop.
In March 2020, Synopsys launched DSO.ai (Design Space Optimization AI), a reinforcement learning tool that explores and learns from previous design optimizations to improve PPA. The company then launched Synopsys.ai Copilot in November 2023 — its first integration of generative AI — through a collaboration with Microsoft, integrating the Azure OpenAI service to provide natural language assistance within its engineering tools.
The company’s current direction is Agentic AI, first revealed at the Design Automation Conference in July, where it showed an autonomous verification workflow built on Nvidia's Agent Toolkit and Nemotron 3 Ultra model. On September 28, two days before the OpenAI deal, Synopsys announced its Autopilot platform and AgentEngineer, a portfolio of seven long-horizon agents covering verification, implementation, analog, manufacturing, meshing, combustion, and EMC analysis. The company reported more than 50 engagements, with availability planned for late 2026.
As detailed in our State of agentic AI in chip design tools roadmap, the move to agentic AI is not exclusive to Synopsys; Cadence and Siemens are also pitching autonomous design agents. Meanwhile, OpenAI, in collaboration with Broadcom, unveiled Jalapeño in June, the company’s first custom inference accelerator. OpenAI said the accelerator's design and optimization process leaned heavily on its AI models, allowing it to go from initial design to tape-out in just nine months. Now, GPT-Synopsys turns that internal experiment into a product.
According to the announcement, GPT-Synopsys will combine OpenAI's frontier models with Synopsys’s EDA software and domain expertise, allowing the model to reason about chip design and verification and operate Synopsys tools directly. Engineers would hand the model objectives such as PPA optimization, timing, and verification closure, while the agents run the tools, interpret the results, implement changes, and iterate toward verified outcomes for an engineer