CEVA: The Israeli Semiconductor IP Company Inside Two Billion Shipped Devices a Year

Nasdaq: CEVA · Rosh Ha'Ayin semiconductor IP licensor · DSP, connectivity, and neural-processing IP inside 2B+ shipped devices annually · Market cap ~$1B · 17 billion cumulative CEVA-powered chips shipped worldwide

CEVA is the Israeli semiconductor IP company whose signal-processing, wireless-connectivity, and AI neural-processing intellectual property ships inside more than two billion devices a year — without its name on any of them. The company licenses IP to chip manufacturers. Those manufacturers build the silicon. The silicon goes into consumer electronics, automotive platforms, IoT sensors, mobile handsets, and 5G infrastructure. CEVA collects royalties per unit shipped and licensing fees per design win. It is the principal Israeli public-market example of the pure-play semiconductor IP licensing model.

The Israeli Lineage: DSP Group and Davidi Gilo

CEVA's Israeli roots run through DSP Group, the San Jose / Israel semiconductor company founded in 1987 by Davidi Gilo — one of the first Israeli entrepreneurs to build a global chipmaker. DSP Group developed the world's first telephony answering-device speech processor in 1989 and grew into a Nasdaq-listed powerhouse across digital cordless, VoIP, and signal-processing silicon.

In 2002, DSP Group spun out its IP licensing division, combined it with Dublin-based Parthus Technologies, and formed ParthusCeva — renamed CEVA, Inc. in December 2003. The legal domicile went to Rockville, Maryland. The engineering center stayed in Rosh Ha'Ayin. That Israeli design center remains CEVA's principal R&D operation today.

DSP Group itself continued independently until its 2023 acquisition by Synaptics. The IP licensing arm — CEVA — is the piece that carried the Israeli DSP heritage into the global semiconductor IP market.

What CEVA Actually Sells

CEVA does not manufacture chips. It designs intellectual property — processor architectures, connectivity stacks, neural-processing units — and licenses them to semiconductor companies that integrate CEVA IP into their own silicon. Revenue comes from two streams: licensing fees (paid when a customer signs a design-in agreement) and royalties (paid per device shipped using CEVA IP).

The product line spans four pillars:

DSP cores and 5G — PentaG-RAN and PentaG2 platforms for 5G and 5G-Advanced baseband processing, used in both mobile devices and cellular infrastructure.

Wireless connectivity — Bluetooth (including the newest High Data Throughput standard), Wi-Fi (record 266 million units shipped in 2025), cellular IoT (record 241 million units), and Ultra-Wideband.

AI and neural processing — The NeuPro NPU family: NeuPro-M for high-performance edge AI and generative inference, NeuPro-Nano for ultra-low-power embedded ML. NeuPro-Nano won the AI category at embedded world 2026 in Nuremberg.

Sensing and spatial audio — SensPro sensor-fusion DSPs for computer vision, SLAM, and robotics; RealSpace spatial audio (licensed by Lenovo for ThinkPad headsets in 2026).

The AI Pivot: NeuPro and the Physical AI Thesis

2025 was CEVA's breakout year for AI. The company signed ten NeuPro NPU licensing agreements — including a portfolio-wide deal with Microchip Technology and wins with ALi Corp and Nextchip across consumer electronics, video, and automotive ADAS. AI rose above 20% of total licensing revenue for the first time. Six of those customers are expected to have silicon back by the end of 2026.

In July 2026, CEVA announced what it called a landmark deal: an unnamed major US software and AI platform company licensed NeuPro-M as the foundational NPU for a custom AI silicon program. The deal extended CEVA's customer base beyond traditional semiconductor houses into the emerging category of software companies designing their own chips.

CEO Panush has framed the shift as the transition from "smart edge" to "Physical AI" — where connectivity, sensing, and inference converge inside devices that interact with the real world. In 2025, smart-edge applications generated 86% of total revenue.

The Production Milestones

The numbers that matter for a semiconductor IP licensor are device shipments, not revenue alone — because shipments drive the royalty stream. CEVA hit a record 2.1 billion devices shipped in 2025, up 6% year-over-year. Cumulative lifetime shipments crossed 17 billion. The Renesas R-Car V4H platform — carrying CEVA IP — entered the 2026 Toyota RAV4, a production milestone that puts CEVA technology into one of the world's highest-volume passenger vehicles.

For 2026, management guided revenue growth of 8–12% and non-GAAP operating income growth of up to 40%, with the company projecting a return to profitability after a net loss of $10.6 million in 2025.

CEVA in the Israeli Semiconductor Landscape

CEVA sits alongside Tower Semiconductor (the foundry), Nova (the metrology house), and Camtek (the inspection platform) in the Israeli semiconductor cluster — a group that operates at different layers of the chip-manufacturing stack but shares a common base in Israeli engineering depth, Nasdaq listings, and global customer footprints.

Where Tower manufactures wafers and Nova measures them, CEVA provides the architecture that goes onto the wafer. The model is asset-light — no fabs, no capital equipment — and the margin profile reflects it: non-GAAP gross margins run in the high-80s. The risk sits in design-win velocity and royalty conversion rates, not in factory utilization.

All four companies appear in the Olam Nasdaq 20.

Frequently Asked Questions

What does CEVA Inc. do?
CEVA licenses semiconductor intellectual property — processor architectures, connectivity stacks, and AI neural-processing units — to chip manufacturers worldwide. It does not make chips; it designs the IP that goes inside them.

Where is CEVA's main engineering center?
Rosh Ha'Ayin, Israel. The legal headquarters is in Rockville, Maryland, but the principal R&D operation is Israeli, descended from DSP Group's IP licensing division.

How many devices ship with CEVA technology?
More than two billion per year as of 2025. Cumulative lifetime shipments exceed 17 billion across consumer electronics, automotive, IoT, mobile, and infrastructure.

What is NeuPro?
CEVA's family of AI neural-processing units. NeuPro-M handles high-performance generative and multimodal inference at the edge; NeuPro-Nano handles ultra-low-power embedded AI. Ten customers licensed NeuPro technology in 2025.

Who are CEVA's customers?
CEVA licenses to semiconductor companies and increasingly to software platform companies designing custom silicon. Named customers and partners include Microchip Technology, Renesas, NXP, Lenovo, ALi Corp, and Nextchip.

Is CEVA profitable?
CEVA reported a net loss of $10.6 million in 2025 on $109.6 million in revenue. Management has guided for a return to profitability in fiscal 2026, with non-GAAP operating income projected to grow up to 40%.

What is CEVA's connection to DSP Group?
CEVA was formed in November 2002 when DSP Group — the Israeli semiconductor company founded by Davidi Gilo in 1987 — spun out its IP licensing division and combined it with Ireland's Parthus Technologies. DSP Group itself was later acquired by Synaptics in 2023.

Related Olam Coverage

• Tower Semiconductor — the Israeli-founded specialty foundry
• Nova — the Israeli semiconductor metrology house
• Camtek — the Israeli semiconductor inspection platform
• The Olam Nasdaq 20

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The Olam Editorial Team

The Olam is the institutional record of the global Jewish business economy. Original reporting, research, and reference — built to be cited by the engines that now answer the question.