CEVA

Summary Risk Factors Risks Related to Our Industry and Markets ● The markets in which we operate are highly competitive, and as a result we could experience a loss of sales, lower prices and lower revenues. ● Because our IP solutions are components of end products, if semiconductor companies and electronic equipment manufacturers do not incorporate our solutions into their end products or if the end products of our customers do not achieve market acceptance, we may not be able to generate adequate sales of our products. ● We depend on market acceptance of third-party semiconductor intellectual property. ● If we are unable to meet the changing needs of our end-users or address evolving market demands, we may not be able to expand our current market positions and penetrate new markets, and our new products may not achieve widespread market acceptance, which may limit our additional revenue opportunities and harm our business. ● Our operating results are affected by the highly cyclical nature of and general economic conditions in the semiconductor industry, including as a result of significant supply chain disruptions.
In addition, new tariffs, trade measures and other geopolitical risks and instability could adversely affect our consolidated results of operations, financial position and cash flows. ● Changes in the U.S. trade environment, including uncertainty over global tariffs and the financial impact of tariffs, as well as economic uncertainty associated with geopolitics, may negatively affect our business, financial condition and results of operations. ● Our success will depend on our ability to successfully manage our geographically dispersed operations. ● Our operations in Israel may be adversely affected by instability in the Middle East region, including with respect to the war between Israel and Hamas that began on October 7, 2023 or the subsequent war in the north with Hezbollah in Lebanon and the attacks from Iran and Yemen.
In addition, terrorist attacks, acts of war or military actions and/or other civil unrest may adversely affect the territories in which we operate and our business, financial condition and operating results. ● Our research and development expenses may increase if the grants we currently receive from the Israeli government are reduced or withheld. ● We face a highly competitive employment market and depend on a limited number of key personnel who would be difficult to replace, and changes in our management and sales teams may adversely affect our operations. ● The sales cycle for our IP and related solutions is lengthy, and even approved projects may have structured payment terms, which makes forecasting of our customer orders and revenues difficult. ● We may seek to expand our business in ways that could result in diversion of resources and extra expenses, and our product development efforts may not generate an acceptable return, if any. ● Because our IP and related solutions are complex, the detection of errors in our products may be delayed, and if we deliver products with defects, our credibility will be harmed, the sales and market acceptance of our products may decrease and product liability claims may be made against us. ● We may not be able to adequately protect our IP, and our business will suffer if we are sued for infringement of the IP rights of third parties or if we cannot obtain licenses to these rights on commercially acceptable terms. ● Cybersecurity threats or other security breaches could compromise sensitive information belonging to us or our customers and could harm our business and our reputation.
Significant changes in U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, or GAAP, including the adoption of the new revenue recognition rules, could materially affect our financial position and results of operations. ● Changes in our tax rates or exposure to additional income tax liabilities or assessments could adversely impact our cash flow, financial condition and results of operations. ● The French and Greece tax benefits that we currently receive and the government programs in which we participate require us to meet certain conditions and may be terminated or reduced in the future, which could increase our tax expenses. ● We are exposed to fluctuations in currency exchange rates. ● Royalty reporting by our licensees may be inaccurate or understated or not sent on a timely basis. ● We are exposed to the credit and liquidity risk of our customers, and to credit exposure in weakened markets, which could result in material losses. ● If we determine that our goodwill and intangible assets have become impaired, we may incur impairment charges, which would negatively impact our operating results.
The evolution of AI architectures, foundation models, software frameworks and hardware acceleration requirements may require continuous and significant investment in both hardware and software toolchains.
If we fail to anticipate or respond to changes in AI compute requirements, including higher-performance and generative AI use cases across PCs, smartphones, automotive and edge infrastructure applications, our competitiveness could be adversely affected.
The following industry players and factors may have a significant impact on our competitiveness: DSP / Signal Processing ● We compete directly in the signal processing cores space with Verisilicon and Cadence.
CPU / Configurable CPU / RISC-V ● We compete with CPU IP or configurable CPU IP providers (offering DSP configured CPU and/or DSP acceleration and/or connectivity capabilities to their IP), such as Arm, Cadence, GlobalFoundries and the RISC-V open source.
The increasing adoption of open-source processor architectures, including RISC-V-based ecosystems, may intensify pricing pressure and increase customer alternatives to licensable IP solutions.
In-House / Vertical Integration Risk ● We compete with custom ASIC providers and internal engineering teams at companies such as Marvell, Broadcom, ST, and NXP that may design programmable DSP core products and signal processing cores in-house and therefore not license our technologies.
Large technology companies and OEMs may increasingly develop proprietary AI, connectivity or system-level silicon solutions in-house, including NPUs and integrated system-on-chip architectures, which could reduce demand for third-party licensable IP.
Wireless Connectivity ● We compete in the short-range wireless markets with established and emerging wireless IP providers and internal engineering teams at companies such as Infineon, Silicon Labs and NXP.
Competition in wireless connectivity may intensify as new entrants and vertically integrated semiconductor vendors seek to develop proprietary Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and cellular IoT solutions.
Imaging / Vision ● We compete in embedded imaging and vision market with Cadence, Videantis, Arm and Verisilicon.
Edge AI / NPU ● We compete in the edge AI (NPU) processor market with AI processor and accelerator providers, including Arm, Cadence, Cambricon, Digital Media Professionals (DMP), Quadric, Imagination Technologies, Nvidia open source NVDLA and Verisilicon, and with internal engineering teams at companies such as Infineon, Silicon Labs and NXP. ● We also compete with emerging AI accelerator providers, open-source hardware initiatives, chiplet-based AI architectures and large technology companies developing proprietary AI silicon for PCs, smartphones, automotive systems and edge infrastructure.
Audio / Voice ● We compete in the audio and voice applications market with Arm, Cadence and Verisilicon.
Spatial Audio / Motion ● We compete in the Spatial Audio and Motion Sensing software market with Waves, Dolby, and CyweeMotion and internal engineering teams at companies such as Apple.
Our future growth will depend on the level of market acceptance of our third-party licensable IP model, the variety of IP offerings available on the market, and a shift in customer preference away from in-house development of proprietary signal processing IP or AI IPs towards licensing open signal processing IP cores and platforms and AI IPs.
In January 2024, we acquired an RF design group in Greece as part of our Ceva-Waves Links new product offering for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi radio technologies.
We expect to begin commercial licensing of this product line in 2026, although its commercial success cannot be assured.
Downturns in the semiconductor industry are characterized by diminished product demand, excess customer inventories, accelerated erosion of prices and excess production capacity, like recent memory price increases and supply constraints.
Further, the high interest rate environment, macroeconomic trends and geopolitical concerns, including ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, unrest in the Middle East, economic slowdown in China, and increase memory chip pricing and short supply, among other things, can negatively impact general consumer and IoT demand, chill the market for new technology investments and adversely affect our revenues.
Factors that may affect our quarterly results of operations in the future include, among other things: ● the gain or loss of significant licensees, partly due to our dependence on a limited number of customers generating a significant amount of quarterly revenues; ● any delay in execution of any anticipated IP licensing arrangement during a particular quarter; ● delays in revenue recognition for some license agreements based on percentage of completion of customized work or other accounting reasons; ● the timing and volume of orders and production by our customers, as well as fluctuations in royalty revenues resulting from fluctuations in unit shipments by our licensees; ● royalty pricing pressures and reduction in royalty rates due to an increase in volume shipments by customers, end-product price erosion and competitive pressures; ● earnings or other financial announcements by our major customers that include shipment data or other information that implicates expectations for our future royalty revenues; ● the mix of revenues among IP licensing and related revenues, and royalty revenues; ● the timing of the introduction of new or enhanced technologies by us and our competitors, as well as the market acceptance of such technologies; ● the discontinuation, or public announcement thereof, of product lines or market sectors that incorporate our technology by our significant customers; ● our lengthy sales cycle and specifically in the third quarter of any fiscal year during which summer vacations slow down decision-making processes of our customers in executing contracts; ● delays in the commercialization of end products that incorporate our technology; ● currency fluctuations, mainly the Euro and the New Israeli Shekel versus the U.S. dollar; ● fluctuations in operating expenses and gross margins associated with the introduction of, and research and development investments in, new or enhanced technologies and adjustments to operating expenses resulting from restructurings; ● the approvals, amounts and timing of Israeli research and development government grants from the Israeli Innovation Authority of the Ministry of Economy and Industry in Israel (IIA), EU grants and French research tax credits; ● the impact of new accounting pronouncements, including the new revenue recognition rules; ● the timing of our payment of royalties to the IIA, which is impacted by the timing and magnitude of license agreements and royalty revenues derived from technologies that were funded by grant programs of the IIA; ● statutory changes associated with research tax benefits applicable to French technology companies; ● our ability to scale our operations in response to changes in demand for our technologies; ● entry into new end markets that utilize our signal processing IP, software and platforms; ● changes in our pricing policies and those of our competitors; ● restructuring, asset and goodwill impairment and related charges, as well as other tax write-offs and tax and accounting changes or adjustments, such as the fourth quarter 2023 tax charges related to Internal Revenue Code (“IRC”) Section 174 and the fourth quarter 2025 tax charges related to deferred tax asset in France due to limitations of usage of customer withholding taxes; ● geopolitical conditions, including global trade competition and regulatory enhancements resulting from tariffs and business restrictions imposed by government entities, such as the restricted party lists promulgated, expanded and updated by the U.S. government during the last several years, and further tightening of restrictions on the transfer to China of certain advanced AI chips, semiconductors and supercomputing items, as well as other regulatory actions and changes that may adversely affect the business environment; ● general economic conditions, including the current economic conditions, and its effect on the semiconductor industry and sales of consumer products into which our technologies are incorporated; ● delays in final product delivery due to unexpected issues introduced by our service or EDA tool providers; ● delays in ratification of standards for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, UWB or cellular standards that can affect the introduction of new products; ● constraints on chip manufacturing capacity due to high demand or shutdowns of semiconductor fabrication plants and other manufacturing facilities; ● reductions in demand for consumer and digital devices due to lockdowns or overall financial difficulties caused by future pandemic outbreaks or public health threats; and ● delays in the radio RF product line for Bluetooth and Wi-Fi productization and deployment.
While the high interest rate environment and macroeconomic concerns related to slowdowns experienced in 2023 and 2024 have largely abated, these conditions continue in certain areas.
Along with new factors such as U.S.-China trade tensions, the limitation of EDA usage in early 2025, and memory chip price increases and supply shortages in the later part of 2025 and continuing into 2026, they distort more traditional seasonality trends.
Sales to UNISOC (formerly Spreadtrum Communications, Inc.), accounted for 15% and 15% of our total revenues for 2025 and 2024, respectively.
With respect to our royalty revenues in particular, a small number of customers ship substantial volumes of products and thus pay outsized royalty revenues, with two royalty paying customers each representing 10% or more of our total royalty revenues for 2025, and collectively representing 39% of our total royalty revenues for 2025.
Two royalty paying customers each representing 10% or more of our total royalty revenues for 2024, and collectively representing 46% of our total royalty revenues for 2024.
Our business is dependent on IP licensing and related revenues, which may vary from period to period.
In addition, there are increasing downward pricing pressures in the semiconductor industry on end products incorporating our technology.
Royalty revenues were approximately 42% and 44% of our total revenues for 2025 and 2024, respectively.
While we anticipate that integrating different IPs, such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, into combo solutions would enable us to charge higher royalties and increase licensing fees, any failure to successfully deliver such integrated combo solutions to customers could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations.
Approximately 82% of our total revenues for 2025 and 81% for 2024 were derived from customers located outside of the United States.
Revenues from customers located in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region account for a substantial portion of these revenues, with significant concentration of revenues in China, which accounted for 62% and 49% of total revenues for 2025 and 2024, respectively.
Tensions between the U.S. and China have been escalating in recent years, and a number of factors may exacerbate these tensions in the future.
Changes in the U.S. trade environment, including uncertainty over global tariffs and the financial impact of tariffs, as well as economic uncertainty associated with geopolitics, may negatively affect our business, financial condition and results of operations.
The United States has enacted and proposed to enact significant new tariffs, as well as changes to existing tariffs.
In addition, changes to U.S. trade policies, treaties and tariffs have resulted and may continue to result in retaliatory tariffs enacted by trading partners in response to such actions.
Trade restrictions and rising political tensions could reduce trade volume, investment and other economic activities between major international economies, resulting in a material adverse effect on global economic conditions and the stability of global financial markets.
Any of these factors could negatively impact our customers and other stakeholders.

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This report contains market data prepared by third party research firms.
Actual market results may differ from their projections.
This report includes trademarks and registered trademarks of Ceva.
Products or service names of other companies mentioned in this Annual Report on Form 10-K may be trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
BUSINESS Company Overview We are the leader in innovative silicon and software intellectual property (IP) solutions that enable smart edge products to connect, sense, and infer data more reliably and efficiently.
Commanding 67% of the wireless connectivity market share based on IP design revenues in 2023, according to IPnest, we believe we have the industry’s broadest portfolio of comprehensive wireless communications and processor IP platforms and embedded software solutions for the deployment of artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and models directly onto local edge devices (Edge AI).
We power the connectivity, sensing, and inference capabilities in today’s most advanced smart edge products across four large, diversified markets with significant opportunity for long-term growth, consumer Internet-of-Things (IoT), automotive, industrial and infrastructure, as well as in the mobile and personal computing (PC) markets where we have well-established customers and presence, which based on our research we believe will represent a $5 billion total addressable market by 2027.
Since 2003, more than 19 billion of the world’s most innovative smart edge products from AI-infused smartwatches, IoT devices and wearables to autonomous vehicles, 5G mobile networks and more have been shipped with Ceva IP, with approximately 2 billion shipped in 2024 alone.
For more than three decades, we have been a trusted partner to hundreds of leading semiconductor and original equipment manufacturer (OEM) companies servicing not just our largest target growth and incumbent markets, but also a wide variety of other end markets and applications, including smart-home, surveillance, robotics and medical.
Our transformative semiconductor IP and embedded software offerings are incorporated by customers into application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) and application-specific standard products (ASSPs) to enable power-efficient, intelligent, secure and connected devices that connect, sense, and infer - the three critical pillars of the rapidly evolving era of AI-enabled smart edge.
We have established leadership positions in key technology areas, including reliable and secure wireless connectivity for use in both infrastructure and end points across multiple end markets, low-power and highly efficient audio and video/vision sensing and interface solutions and scalable neural-network-based AI processing.
We are a sustainability and environmentally conscious company.
We have adopted both a Code of Business Conduct and Ethics and a Sustainability Policy, in which we emphasize and focus on environmental preservation, recycling, the welfare of our employees and privacy – which we promote on a corporate level.
At Ceva, we are committed to social responsibility, values of preservation and consciousness towards these purposes.
Our revenue mix primarily comprises IP licensing fees and related revenues and royalties generated from our customers’ shipments of smart edge products deploying our IP.
Related revenues include revenues from post contract support, training and sale of development systems and chips.
We were initially incorporated in Delaware on November 22, 1999 under the name DSP Cores, Inc.
Our current company was created through the combination of the DSP IP licensing division of DSP Group, Inc. and Parthus Technologies plc (Parthus) in November 2002.
With a global team of more than 400 development, support and sales professionals, we are headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, with research and development facilities in France, Greece, Ireland, Israel, Serbia, the United Kingdom and the United States and sales and support offices throughout Asia Pacific (APAC), Sweden, France, Israel, United Kingdom and the United States.
We are committed to our customers’ success and intend to continue to drive innovation in smart connected systems in the AI era.
Industry Background Short Range Wireless IP Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and ultra-wideband (UWB) are key enabling technologies for any company looking to address the consumer IoT, automative, industrial, mobile, and PC end markets with Edge AI and IoT use cases.
Moreover, many companies wish to integrate these connectivity technologies into System-on-Chip (SoC) designs rather than provide connectivity through an additional chip in the system.
Yet, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth standards are constantly evolving, and the many new end applications are looking to benefit from these enhancements, which put further time-to-market pressure on systems and chip companies.
In many cases, companies need to support multiple wireless standards in a device, which further increases the complexity.
The advent of Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) and the push to add embedded AI capabilities to almost every device has resulted in significant demand for connectivity IP that address this growing market, which includes smart True Wireless Stereo (TWS) earbuds, wearables, health monitoring, smart speakers, smart home appliances, white goods, and many other consumer and IoT devices.
By licensing from us rather than developing these technologies in-house, our customers aim to access the latest standards, profiles and state-of-the-art radio frequences (RF) and to improve their time-to-market without undertaking the expensive research and development costs required to develop these technologies internally.
Cellular IoT IP Cellular IoT, and specifically Narrowband IoT (NB-IoT), LTE Cat-1 and 5G RedCap standards, have become key technologies for companies wishing to connect low power IoT devices over long distances using cellular networks.
By its nature, cellular is a very complex technology, with most of the industry knowledge held by a few large companies.
By providing low power cellular digital signal processing (DSP) cores and platforms, we help our customers overcome the entry barriers to the cellular IoT market without undertaking the complex and expensive research and development process to develop these technologies internally. 5G/5G Advanced User Equipment and Infrastructure IP As 5G and the upcoming 5G-Advanced standards continue to be deployed globally, new use cases and applications that leverage the standard’s enormous bandwidth and ultra-low latency are emerging, including fixed wireless access, private networks, Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks and vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications.
Our latest generation Ceva-XC20 family of DSPs and PentaG2 platform IP effectively lower the high entry barriers for network equipment manufacturers, IoT companies, satellite OEMs and newcomers who wish to address these market opportunities by providing comprehensive IP on which to build their 5G/5G Advanced SoC and ASICs, while helping reduce the time-to-market, risk, effort and associated cost.
Sensor Fusion Inertial and environmental sensors based on micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) are used in an increasing number of devices, including smartphones, laptops, robots, TWS earbuds, spatial audio headsets, smart TVs, remote controls, AR and VR headsets, drones and many other consumer and industrial devices.
The software required to process the sensor data and fuse the data from multiple sensors is complex and requires unique specialization.
By licensing our IP rather than developing this sensor processing software in-house, our customers can focus their efforts developing the applications that utilize the processed sensor data to create differentiated, contextually aware devices.
In addition, the processors required to combine the data from these sensors and run the applications are performance intensive and increasingly require specialized architectures that can handle a combination of traditional DSP processing and AI processing.
Our SensPro sensor fusion AI DSPs offer a combination of high performance single and half precision floating-point math for powertrain and Radar applications along with a large amount of 8- and 16-bit parallel processing capacity required for deep neural network (DNN) inference processing.
NPUs Neural processing units (NPUs) are specialized processors designed to accelerate neural network computations, such as machine learning (ML) and AI.
NPUs are optimized for performing complex mathematical operations required by neural networks, such as matrix multiplications and convolutions, much more efficiently than traditional processors like central processing units (CPUs) or graphics processing units (GPUs).
Our family of NeuPro NPUs are tailored to meet the full scale of AI applications, from tinyML and embedded AI through to Small Language Models, Large Language Models and Time Test Compute.
These NPUs are specifically architected to provide the AI performance combined with optimal DSP for filtering data from sensor inputs, all running in real-time, on device with minimal power consumption.
This makes the NeuPro NPU family ideal for a wide range of smart edge devices, including smartphones, automotive advanced driver-assistance systems (“ADAS”), next generation AI PC, intelligent microcontroller units (MCUs) for consumer and industrial markets, wireless audio SoCs, smart cameras and other AIoT devices.

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