Chiplet interconnect startup Eliyan is reportedly being eyed for acquisition after a big-name player expressed interest.

The Santa Clara, California-based firm develops interconnect systems for speeding up AI processing across devices. Its bi-directional interconnect concept is designed to provide more bandwidth-efficient connections spanning die-to-die and die-to-memory.

The Information reports that investors have received notice of an apparent takeover bid. The report did not name the buyer and Eliyan is believed to have been working with an investment bank for the past few months.

The report suggests Arm was in talks to snap up the startup, but opted against the move. The Information wrote that talks were “early” and no bid ever materialized.

Eliyan was founded in 2021 by former Marvell CTO and networking VP Ramin Farjadrad and ex-PsiQuantum engineering SVP Syrus Ziai. The startup was valued at around $1 billion following its $145 million Series C round back in June, with Cisco Investments and Lumentum among backers.

The startup has not commented publicly on the reports, though any deal would continue the growing market consolidation in the AI infrastructure market. Nebius, NetApp, and AMD have all made acquisitions in the past month, while Seagate and Toshiba are reportedly at loggerheads over a potential purchase of TDK's magnetic-heads business for hard-disk drives (HDDs).

Eliyan earlier this week debuted optical interconnect means for chiplets. The NuLink platform makes use of 2D micro vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (microVCSELs) to extend connectivity in the scale-up domain.