Anirudh Devgan on EDA software
From Jensen Huang & Anirudh Devgan on Design for AI and AI for Design at CadenceLIVE 2026 – Fireside Chat · · Cadence Design Systems
“Cadence and many many software companies particularly engineering EDA the software is not workflow automation it's fundamental tools these algorithms are not going to be you're not going to rediscover a better one these are excellent algorithms that have been refined over time and they're fundamentally grounded and it's integrated into all of our companies and we can't have agents coming out with random other ones we want them to use the tools tools that we have.”
On , Anirudh Devgan, Chief Executive Officer, President & Director at Cadence Design Systems Inc, spoke about EDA software during Jensen Huang & Anirudh Devgan on Design for AI and AI for Design at CadenceLIVE 2026 – Fireside Chat on Cadence Design Systems.
About Anirudh Devgan
Anirudh Devgan, President and CEO of Cadence Design Systems, appeared in a fireside chat with NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang at CadenceLIVE 2026 on May 3, 2026. During the discussion, Devgan and Huang spoke about the use of AI agents in electronic design automation (EDA). Huang stated that Cadence now has "an infinite number more chip designers" due to AI agents, and that Cadence's total addressable market has expanded beyond chips into the physical world. Devgan noted that Cadence is spending "hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of tokens a year" and that the company's token usage is "going skyrocketing." Huang also said that specialized agents for place-and-route and verification need to be "the world's best" and that Cadence is counted on to build them. On April 27, 2026, Devgan reported Cadence's Q1 FY26 earnings, with EPS of $1.96 (above the $1.81 estimate) and revenue of $1.47 billion (above the $1.45 billion estimate). He raised the company's 2026 revenue growth outlook to 17% and said Cadence expects to achieve the "rule of 60" for the first time. Devgan stated that EDA spending as a percentage of R&D has risen from 7% to 11%, and that AI could push it higher. He also said that "physical AI will be bigger than data center AI by long shot" and that Cadence is the only company that does its own chip, giving it a "10-year lead" in Palladium and Protium hardware. In the Q2 2025 earnings call on February 18, 2026, Devgan announced a settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice and Bureau of Industry and Security regarding transactions with customers in China between 2015 and 2021, and raised the 2025 financial outlook to 13% revenue growth and 16% EPS growth. He also said that chip design workload is increasing by 30 to 40 times over the next five years, driving demand for automation and AI.