By Synaptics IR  |  March 2026

It’s often said in the technology sector that the company that owns the developer workflow tends to build durable positions in the market. Certain architectures maintain durable competitive positions across technology cycles because hundreds of thousands of engineers have developed software, toolchains, and product roadmaps on those platforms.

Edge AI is at an inflection point where developer ecosystems become the decisive variable. Semiconductor companies that build platforms for developers - and make it easy to take a design from prototype to production - tend to build more durable customer relationships.

On March 10, 2026, Synaptics made three announcements that, taken together, are an ecosystem strategy. Two distinct threads run through those announcements. The first is our partnership with Google Research and the Coral NPU platform, rooted in the Astra SL2610 family introduced in October 2025. The second is a set of new product introductions that are designed to expand our edge AI portfolio across a broader application range. 

The Google Research Partnership and the Coral NPU

Any developer who has built production AI applications for embedded devices understands what Google Research has called the fragmentation problem. As Billy Rutledge, Director of Engineering for Systems Research at Google Research, has described it: if you build a model and try to deploy it on 15 different SoCs, you need 15 different toolchains.¹ We believe Google Research is looking to solve the fragmentation challenge with the Coral NPU – an open-source, RISC-V-based neural processing architecture designed for sub-10-milliwatt inference workloads.²

Synaptics is the first company to implement the Coral NPU in production silicon.³ On March 10, we launched the Synaptics Coral Dev Board in partnership with Google Research. The Board is pre-configured with Google’s Gemma 3 270 million parameter open model and the Synaptics Torq toolchain. Google Research’s rationale for selecting Synaptics as partner is publicly stated: depth in low-power design, a strong IP portfolio, and a genuine enthusiasm for open standards.⁴ In partnership with Grinn Global, a limited version of the Board is purpose-built to help accelerate production development of Edge AI devices. The Board is described as the first of multiple planned developer boards to be created as we expand our Edge AI ecosystem.⁵

From a market perspective, the relevant point is straightforward: a developer that builds on the Coral Dev Board is building on Astra silicon and the Torq toolchain. It is not only a product launch, but a broader strategy to have customers develop on the platform.

New Products Across the Edge AI Spectrum

The second thread is along the same lines of providing customers with solutions and platforms. Two new product families announced on March 10 extend our edge AI portfolio to address a wider range of applications and power envelopes in our recent releases here and here. 

The SYN765x integrates wireless connectivity and AI processing in a single chip for smart home and industrial IoT applications, and is reported to reduce reference bill of materials cost by up to 25 percent versus comparable multi-chip designs.6 The Astra SR80 and SRW1500 expand our microcontroller family into premium audio and connected edge devices, with the SRW1500 among the first single-chip AI microcontrollers to integrate Wi-Fi 7. Both are targeted for sampling in Q2 2026 with expected production in Q4 2026.

Together with the Coral Dev Board and Astra SL2610 platform, these products are intended to address the full edge AI application spectrum - from connected sensors to application-processor-class multimodal compute - under a single open toolchain.

The Market Opportunity Ahead

Our financial results reflect growth in product categories aligned with the Edge AI market. In Q2 FY26, Synaptics delivered revenue of $302.5 million, up 13 percent year over year, with Core IoT products growing 53 percent year over year. The AI-native product strategy is designed to support long-term growth.⁷

Today’s announcements add to the strategic roadmap of the company. New product introduction compounds the platform effect. A developer ecosystem that is open, well-supported, and validated by a named technology partner helps drive adoption - and creates the conditions for design wins to convert into long-term customer relationships.

Looking Ahead

The edge AI opportunity is defined by three things: the installed base of devices requiring local intelligence, the developers who build applications for those devices, and the platforms that make that development tractable at scale. We are building products and solutions to enable edge AI adoption in a way that is coherent, differentiated, and increasingly validated by external partners.

We welcome investors, customers, and developers to explore what an open, developer-first approach to edge AI means for their products. 

Forward-Looking Safe-Harbor Statement

This article contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, including statements regarding industry trends, platform strategies, product development, sampling and production development and timelines, partnerships, ecosystem development plans, competitive positioning, and potential business opportunities in edge AI and related technologies. These statements are based on current expectations, estimates, and projections and involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied. Risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to: macroeconomic conditions; trade tensions and the uncertainty of tariff impacts; supply chain constraints; manufacturing and yield challenges; inflationary pressures; shifts in customer demand; competitive product offerings and technological developments; the pace of adoption of edge AI and related technologies; regulatory developments; and delays in product development, qualification, sampling, or volume production. For more information regarding these and other risks, please refer to the “Risk Factors” sections of Synaptics’ most recent Form 10-K and Form 10-Q filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date of this publication. Synaptics undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information or future events, or otherwise, except as required by law.

Source Attribution

All factual claims in this article draw from the following public sources:

1.  Embedded Computing Design, “Synaptics and Google Partner on Open, Low-Power Endpoint AI,” quoting Billy Rutledge, Director of Engineering for Systems Research, Google Research. Available at embeddedcomputing.com.

2.  EE Times, “Google Open-Sources NPU IP, Synaptics Implements It,” October 2025. Background on the Coral NPU and its design objectives.

3.  EE Times, op. cit. Rutledge confirmed Synaptics has the only implementation of the Coral NPU in production silicon at time of publication.

4.  Synaptics Press Release, “Google Research and Synaptics Launch Next-Generation Coral Dev Board for Developers to Bring Multimodal Edge AI Applications to Life,” March 10, 2026 (GlobeNewswire).

5.  Embedded Computing Design, op. cit. Selection criteria and Vikram Gupta, SVP & GM, Edge Compute & Connectivity Solutions, Synaptics, on the planned developer board roadmap with Google Research.

6.  Synaptics Press Releases, “Synaptics Introduces SYN765x, an Industry-Leading AI-Native Wi-Fi 7 Solution for Integrated IoT Edge Applications” and “Synaptics Expands Astra Edge AI Portfolio with SR80 Series for AI-enhanced Premium Audio and SRW1500 Series for Connected Distributed Intelligence,” both March 10, 2026 (GlobeNewswire).

7.  Synaptics Q2 FY26 Earnings Release and Conference Call Transcript, February 5, 2026. Revenue of $302.5 million, Core IoT +53% year-over-year, fifth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth.