Siemens buys Lauterbach: closing the gap between chip and code

Siemens announced this morning that it has signed an agreement to buy Lauterbach, maker of the TRACE32 debug and trace tools. Not an EDA girlie, but from what I can gather, TRACE32 is one of those tools the people who use it consider indispensable. According to Siemens, “[t]he combination of Siemens’ and Lauterbach’s complementary technologies enables a unified view of chip and software behavior and helps customers more quickly identify errors arising from complex interactions between hardware and software during chip development. The results are faster time to revenue and higher product quality.”

Lauterback describes TRACE32 as a family of hardware-assisted debuggers and real-time trace tools for microprocessors and embedded CPU cores. Engineers connect it to a target, whether a board, a prototype, or a pre-silicon model, to stop and step the processor, inspect memory and registers, and record what the code actually did. It supports a huge range of chips and core architectures, including complex systems-on-a-chip (SoCs) from major chip vendors, most (all?) of which seem to be Lauterbach partners. It’s also widely used in safety-critical development and certification workflows, which matters a lot in Siemens’ automotive and aerospace markets.

TL;DR. Siemens EDA, fka Mentor Graphics, already sells hardware-assisted verification: emulation and prototyping systems that run a chip design before it’s fabricated, so teams can start testing early. Lauterbach adds a way to debug the software running on that not-yet-chip with the same tool developers will use later on real silicon.

This deal takes Siemens EDA further up the stack, from chip design into the embedded software world where Siemens already plays through its automotive software and its PAVE360 virtual-validation work. For automotive customers in particular, a story that runs from SoC emulation through ECU software debug to vehicle-level validation, from one vendor, is compelling. For Lauterbach, Siemens brings global sales reach and a position inside one of the three big EDA vendors at a time when its customers’ problems are getting more complex.

No financial details were announced, but this is a teeny addition in terms of revenue —Lauterbach had revenue of roughly €60 million in 2025, rounding error for Siemens—clearly, the point of this deal was the capabilities Lauterbach brings to Siemens EDA. But it serves more than 1,200 customers, mostly in automotive, semiconductors, and telecommunications—which matters a great deal to Siemens, I would imagine.

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

Siemens announces results on Thursday, and we might learn more then.