Synopsys is aiming to convince the market that it's a winner from artificial-intelligence. Bringing OpenAI and Amazon on side is a pretty good step for the chip-design software company.

Synopsys shares were up 12% at $487.79 early Thursday, adding to a 4.8% gain the previous day when the company held an investor event. That was set to make it the best performer in the Nasdaq 100, according to Dow Jones Market Data, and put it on course for the best two-day stretch since September 2025.

The most eye-catching of the company's announcements were its AI partnerships. Synopsys and OpenAI have partnered to launch GPT-Synopsys, a specialized model for chip design. Although the two companies didn't give financial details, they said they would share revenue under a "multiyear agreement" and they are already in talks with leading semiconductor customers over its use.

Meanwhile, Synopsys also said it had agreed a deal worth more than $1 billion to work with Amazon on custom chips. The agreement expands Amazon's current use of Synopsys' intellectual property and its electronic-design automation software. Notably, the deal is an example of Synopsys' new license-plus-royalty business model for its intellectual-property business, meaning payments should rise with production.

Together the two agreements should help tackle one of the major concerns around Synopsys, which is that AI would allow its customers to do more of the chip design work themselves and potentially cut into the company's business.

"Everybody's building their own chips, and we have insatiable demand," Synopsys CFO Shelagh Glaser told Barron's in an interview. "The complexity of the chips people are building are beyond anything we've ever seen before."

On top of the partnerships, Synopsys also raised its long-term financial targets, now saying it targets midteens compound annual revenue growth through fiscal year 2030, from double-digit growth previously. For fiscal year 2027, the company expects revenue growth of around 15%.

"AI agents for design tools should result in revenue acceleration for Cadence and Synopsys specifically as these tools allow users to save on human costs (e.g., electrical engineers can be more efficient at their job)," wrote StoneX Financial analyst Gary Mobley in a research note.

Mobley has a Buy rating and $570 target price on Synopsys stock.

Synopsys stock had fallen 7.4% so far this year coming into Thursday's session. Its peer Cadence Design Systems has risen 5.6% over the same period. Synopsys CFO Glaser attributed recent weakness to concerns over AI disruption and the integration of simulation software provider Ansys, which it acquired last year for $35 billion.

"We had said 2026 was going to be a transitional year," Glaser said. "We were laying the expectations that we would change the business model in custom IP and we said that we would be able to announce deals by the end of this year, and that was the Amazon deal."