R&D spending and acquisitions in the EDA market have strengthened the sector which is now valued at over $170bn. Jay Vleeschouwer, managing director software research at Griffin Securities, gave a positive review of the EDA industry at DAC 2026. At the heart of EDA, he said is a strong core EDA business (software) alongside hardware and IP. Convergence is where the world of EDA meets adjacent and complementary disciplines to engineering software. “EDA companies are clearly further along that other parts of engineering software in terms of delivering, enabling and absorbing AI and ML capabilities.