Integrated Voltage Regulators: The Technology and Two Deals

Not investment advice. This video summarizes public sources as of November 2, 2026. Company figures are the companies' own claims. MESH was an investor in Empower, and MESH or its partners may have relationships with other companies mentioned.

Transcript

0:00 · Intro

Here's a plain-English look at integrated voltage regulators, and two deals built on them. Analog Devices paid $1.5 billion for Empower. And on November 2nd, 2026, onsemi agreed to buy Ferric for $600 million in cash, plus up to $175 million more. We'll cover the physics, the technology, both deals, why now, and what's unproven. Start with the problem.

0:29 · The problem

Power is voltage times current, and AI chips push both the wrong way. A paper with Nvidia co-authors says Nvidia's data center GPUs tripled in power from 2020 to 2024, to 1,200 watts. Core voltage is now 0.65 to 0.8 volts. So current explodes. A 700-watt GPU needs 60 amps at 12 volts, but 875 amps at 0.8. Analog Devices now talks of next-generation chips at 6,000 amps. Resistive loss grows with the square of current, and the final stretch to the chip carries all of it. An Intel presentation, relayed by the newsletter Chipstrat, shows the effect. At 1 kilowatt per GPU, 66% of input power becomes useful compute, and resistive loss is 89 watts. At a projected 5 kilowatts, that falls to 42%, with 2.2 kilowatts of resistive loss. Intel's model says an in-package regulator cuts that to 476 watts. It's a model, from a company marketing this packaging. The second problem is speed. When a chip's demand jumps, voltage dips. That's droop. Board regulators, at around a megahertz, can only adjust about once a microsecond. So chips run at a higher voltage all the time, just in case. That's a guard band. Power scales with voltage squared, so a 10% margin costs about 20% more power. A faster regulator, closer in, lets designers shrink that margin. That's where much of the claimed saving comes from. So what is a voltage regulator?

2:12 · How it works

Usually, a buck converter. A switch chops the input on and off very fast, and the share of time it's on sets the output voltage. An inductor and a capacitor smooth those pulses. Many run in parallel, as phases. Infineon says several board modules around a processor can exceed 2,000 amps. Today, boards typically step 48 volts to 12, then regulators around the chip take it under a volt, sending current sideways. Nvidia's planned 800-volt shift changes the top of that chain, not this last inch. The fix is moving the last step closer: to the back of the board, the back of the package, or inside the package. An integrated voltage regulator, or IVR, puts most of the converter, including inductors and capacitors, into one chip. Vendors draw that line in different places. Now the technology. To fit near the chip, the inductor and capacitor must shrink, and to shrink them, you switch faster.

3:09 · The technology

But each switch costs energy, so loss rises with frequency. That's the central trade-off. One board module runs up to 2 megahertz. Ferric's datasheet says typically 15. Speed takes a different switch. Empower uses FinFET transistors, as GPUs do, with a 3.3-volt input. Ferric specifies 1.8. So an IVR doesn't replace the chain. A stage upstream still has to feed it. The inductor is the hard part. Plain coils in a chip's metal give only a few nanohenries. A magnetic core can raise that tenfold or more. Here the two companies diverge. Power Electronics News says Ferric deposits thin magnetic films on the wafer, while Empower uses high-frequency air-core inductors. Capacitors change too. Silicon capacitors etch deep trenches into a wafer. In one Empower example, a part with 2.5 times less capacitance but 80 times lower series inductance beat a ceramic bank. Speed beats capacity. The idea isn't new. Intel shipped an integrated regulator in its Haswell chips in 2013, switching at 140 megahertz, at 90% efficiency by its own figures, with inductors in the package. It stayed in most server processors but left Skylake client chips. What's new today is the scale of the current. Now the companies.

4:43 · Empower + ADI

Empower was co-founded in 2014 by Tim Phillips, Gene Sheridan and David Lidsky, a Volterra co-founder. Its AI platform is Crescendo. Empower claims up to 3,000 amps from 50 regulators. A 2026 brochure says 2,600 peak, and a 2026 demo showed close to 1,000. Analog Devices said capacitors were in production, with IVR programs advancing. One 2025 article had Crescendo shipping, but we found no proof of volume. Analog Devices announced the deal on May 19th, 2026: $1.5 billion, all cash. It closed on July 7th. An analyst asked why a company with Linear, Maxim and Volterra in its history needed to buy this. CEO Vincent Roche said there was a gap in the portfolio, and time is of the essence. Analog Devices claims 10 to 15% lower compute power, or roughly $30 million a year per gigawatt. It gave no basis. Roche said it inherits a fairly small amount of revenue, and expects demand to surge in 2027. Ferric is a Columbia University spin-off, founded by Noah Sturcken and Kenneth Shepard, in 2011 by its own account.

5:56 · Ferric + onsemi

A 2013 Columbia-IBM prototype peaked at 71% efficiency. Its Fe1766 is specified at 89%, at 160 amps, stepping 1.8 volts to 0.75. It raised only about $41 million, per Form D filings. Its newest part was sampling in October. A September post placed Ferric between design-in and production qualification. onsemi's deal is $600 million in cash, before adjustments, plus up to $175 million on revenue milestones through 2029. It expects to close this quarter, so for now it's signed, not closed. It raised its 2030 AI data center target by $500 million, to over $3 billion, which the CEO tied to the acquisition. But the CFO expects no meaningful near-term impact. The CEO gave no Ferric revenue guide, and said Ferric is engaged with all of the hyperscalers, naming none. Side by side, these are two bets on one idea. Empower: air-core inductors, 3.3 volts in, $1.5 billion in cash, after more than $200 million raised. Ferric: magnetic film on the wafer, 1.8 volts in, $600 million up front and $775 million at most, after about $41 million raised. Neither has disclosed revenue, so no sales multiple is possible. So why now? Four reasons.

7:36 · Why now

Physics: an Empower manager said at 3,000 amps, you start hitting electromigration limits, where current damages the metal. Customers: Ferric's CEO said in 2025 that close regulation had been a nice feature they didn't need yet, and that this changed within 12 months. Manufacturing: TSMC said in 2025 that IVRs are to be applied in its advanced packaging, and it has shown a design. And incumbents chose speed. Analog Devices calls this layer one of the fastest and largest growing analog opportunities of the AI era, and it bought rather than built. It's wider than these two. In August, Infineon agreed to buy C2i, citing future substrate-integrated regulators. In October, Navitas closed its purchase of Claros. Marvell has offered pre-validated package regulators since 2025, with partners like Empower, Ferric, Infineon and Monolithic Power, whose CEO, on Empower, said: we have our own solutions. Now, what isn't proven.

8:45 · Open questions

We found no public statement from Nvidia or AMD putting IVRs on a named roadmap. That link is still inference. TSMC's own 2025 slide labeled the in-package architecture a possible future. And we found no credible IVR-specific market forecast. The nearest thing is onsemi's $500 million target, a company figure. The strongest counter-argument: physics says move the last step closer, not that it must be an in-package IVR. Vertical power modules are a live business. Vicor says it just booked a large order from its lead AI customer. It claims an IVR stage costs 10 to 15% in loss. That's a competitor's number, with no published test. But Vicor is hedging too, offering to feed IVRs at 1.8 volts. A mix of both may be the near-term outcome. Other risks. Heat: even at 90% efficiency, 2 kilowatts leaves over 200 watts near the die. In-sourcing: Futurum flags AI chip vendors or larger power players building their own. Schedule: SemiAnalysis reported Nvidia's Kyber rack slipped to 2028, though Nvidia says its roadmap is intact. And history: Altera bought power-chip maker Enpirion for $134 million in 2013. Intel, which inherited it, sold it for $85 million in 2020.

10:20 · Recap

To recap. AI chips need thousands of amps below a volt, and the last inch costs real power and performance. Moving the regulator closer takes fast switches, tiny inductors and silicon capacitors. Analog Devices has closed on Empower. onsemi has signed for Ferric. Both say meaningful revenue is still ahead. And we found no public commitment from Nvidia or AMD. The physics of moving power closer is clear. Whether an in-package regulator from an independent supplier is the answer is what these deals are betting on. This summarizes public sources as of November 2nd, 2026. Company figures are the companies' own claims. MESH was an investor in Empower, and MESH or its partners may have relationships with other companies mentioned. This isn't investment advice.