The United States product engineering firm Aricent has acquired Bengaluru-based chip design services company SmartPlay for $180 million, in one of the biggest acquisitions in the semiconductor space in India. The deal also marks Aricent's fifth and the biggest ever acquisition in India.

SmartPlay was founded in 2008 by Pradeep Vajram, a semiconductor industry veteran of 25 years, who sold an earlier venture, Spike Technologies, to Qualcomm for $20 million in 2004. At present, SmartPlay has a workforce of 1,200 people and counts Qualcomm and Intel as customers.

With design centres in Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Noida, San Jose, San Diego, Austin and Singapore, SmartPlay has emerged as one of the fastest growing technology services companies in the world. The SmartPlay acquisition is expected to help Aricent accelerate its research and development efforts in embedded software and the emerging high-potential space of internet-of-things. Aricent started operations in late 1990s as Hughes Software, a firm that was acquired by Flextronics International. In 2006, private equity major Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR) acquired a majority stake in the venture and renamed it Aricent. The company now has over 10,000 engineers, of which 9,000 are based in India.