California-based chipmaker Qualcomm has increased its bid for semiconductor firm NXP Semiconductors to $44 billion as it looks to fend off a takeover from Broadcom.

The chipmaker had previously offered $110 per NXP share but has now raised this $127.50 per share. Under the new deal, Qualcomm will only need to tender 70 per cent of NXP's ordinary shares, as opposed to 80 per cent under the original agreement.

This deal strikes a blow to Broadcom, which had a stipulation in its offer that it would only acquire Qualcomm if the firm kept its original $110 per share deal or terminated the deal entirely. It is now "evaluating its options" with regards to the acquisition.

"An attractive acquisition"

"The Board unanimously believes this is an attractive acquisition at this price for Qualcomm stockholders based on NXP's recent strong financial performance, the growth in key strategic areas such as Auto and IoT and our high confidence in management’s ability to execute upon the synergy opportunities," said Qualcomm board of directors head Tom Horton.

Broadcom made moves to acquire Qualcomm earlier in February 2018 when it signed committed financing agreements of up to $100 billion. It has offered $121 billion to buy the chipmaker.

Qualcomm recently partnered with mobile game streaming service Hatch to power its cloud services. As part of the deal, Hatch will run on servers based on the 48-core Qualcomm Centriq 2400 processor.