Billionaire Weili Dai to pocket $237M from Alphawave IP sale

Billionaire tech entrepreneur Weili Dai is poised to gain a hefty windfall of approximately US$237 million following the sale of Alphawave IP Group to American semiconductor giant Qualcomm, according to a report from the South China Morning Post.

Dai, the second-largest shareholder of the London-listed semiconductor connectivity firm, holds 96.3 million shares in Alphawave IP. The all-cash deal, valued at US$2.4 billion, was announced earlier this month and is expected to be finalized by the first quarter of 2026, pending regulatory approvals.

The Alphawave payout is set to push Dai’s net worth to an estimated US$3.3 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Born in Shanghai and raised in California, the 63-year-old Dai is best known for co-founding Marvell Technology in 1995 alongside her husband Sehat Sutardja and her brother-in-law. The trio launched the company from their kitchen table, driven by a shared ambition to build "marvellous" technologies — a wordplay that inspired the company’s name, according to Marvell's official blog.

Marvell grew into a major player in the global chip industry, and Dai later expanded her business footprint with investments in various semiconductor ventures, including Alphawave IP, which specializes in high-speed connectivity solutions for data centers and advanced computing.