By Bolaji Ojo
Renesas Electronics, a global leader in embedded semiconductor solutions, is embarking on a bold reinvention, evolving from its legacy as a pure-play chip supplier toward the role of a systems solutions powerhouse.
Central to this transformation is the launch of Renesas 365, a modular, cloud-based platform expressly designed to unify electronic system development, product lifecycle management, and collaborative design for modern engineering teams.
This ambitious shift builds directly on the strengths Renesas gained through the acquisition of Altium, a company renowned for its ECAD software and for pioneering cloud-first design collaboration tools for printed circuit boards. The acquisition, finalized in mid-2024, merged Altium’s agile culture and connectivity technologies with Renesas’ global scale, unlocking new possibilities for streamlining development from silicon to complete systems.
Steering this transformation is Ted Pawela, vice president and head of customer success, digital industries, at Renesas. Pawela brings a unique perspective to his role, having served as chief operating officer at Altium before joining Renesas. “My role is to ensure true customer success, not just in product delivery but in ongoing support and the pursuit of their actual business outcomes,” said Pawela, during an interview with TechSplicit. “We don’t just want to sell a dream. We want to make sure our systems get deployed correctly, meet expectations, and keep improving as our customers’ needs evolve.”
Rethinking electronics
The Renesas 365 initiative encapsulates the joint vision Renesas and Altium share: to leap beyond fragmented, component-level thinking and embrace a unified, digital platform for system design. “Historically, Renesas was a semiconductor company. Full stop,” Pawela said. “What’s changed now is the digital transformation orientation, bringing in not just embedded software, but also collaborative design, lifecycle management, and manufacturing tools. All these things are connected through a unified digital platform.”
Altium’s cloud-powered platform, formerly Altium 365, sets the stage for this transition. “The platform was central to Renesas’ interest in Altium,” Pawela notes. “We both recognized that to truly streamline development, we needed to unify information, foster collaboration, and make the best-in-class tools part of a cohesive design and development system.”
Renesas 365 distinguishes itself with its modular architecture. Pawela emphasizes: “What’s exciting is that you can start with whatever matters most — discovery, detailed design, or lifecycle management. It really lets customers tackle their specific pain points first, then expand the solution as their needs grow.”
Importantly, Renesas 365 is built as an open platform. It will showcase components not only from Renesas but also from other silicon vendors via tools like Octopart. “We recognize the need for a heterogeneous approach,” Pawela says. “Engineers will be able to discover and integrate solutions from a broad supply base, not just our own portfolio.”
Renesas 365 directly addresses modern lifecycle and collaboration challenges. “Great ideas today don’t come just from traditional OEMs; everyone is a potential systems designer,” observes Pawela. The platform’s context-aware tools help map requirements, break down systems into subsystems and components, and streamline cross-team collaboration. “We’re trying to make every block diagram not just a picture, but a model that evolves and stays connected from requirements to hardware, software, and manufacturing,” he said.
Click the video below to watch the interview with Pawela.
By integrating lifecycle management tools for over-the-air updates, fleet management, and embedded AI, Renesas 365 provides robust solutions for real-world needs — from urban traffic control to AI-driven robotics. “At Embedded World, we demonstrated how to push updated AI models wirelessly, manage fleets, and integrate changes,” Pawela adds. “Those are real, industry-defining capabilities.”
A connected future
As Pawela makes clear, Renesas 365 is more than a product. It’s a roadmap for the industry. “We’re moving toward system-level thinking, where everything is connected and collaborative. The key is helping customers build solutions where hardware, software, and subsystem integration all just work, giving engineers confidence that the pieces fit together and perform as intended.”
With Renesas 365, the company affirms its ambition to reshape electronics development for a more integrated, intelligent, and collaborative world. Pawela and his team at Digital Industries are at the heart of this shift, setting a new standard for what it means to deliver customer success in a complex, fast-moving technology landscape.
In the interview, part of our Tech Vision podcast series, Bolaji Ojo, editor-in-chief of TechSplicit, Pawela further explained how the acquisition of Altium is helping Renesas reshape what it means to be an electronics solution provider in 2025 and beyond. See the video below:
Bolaji Ojo is publisher and editor-in-chief of TechSplicit. He can be reached at bojo@techsplicit.com.
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