NEW YORK, May 27 (Reuters) - Chip design software maker

Synopsys ( SNPS ) has reached an agreement with activist

investor Elliott Investment Management that will give one board

seat to the activist investor's managing partner Jesse Cohn, the

company said on Wednesday.

Synopsys ( SNPS ), which has a market valuation of about $100 billion

and counts Tesla and Google parent Alphabet among its customers,

has held discussions with Elliott, one of the industry's most

powerful activists, for roughly two months.

Elliott pushed the company to improve its margins and

Synopsys' ( SNPS ) stock price has climbed roughly 20% since Elliott's

involvement became public. The hedge fund built a multi-billion

dollar investment in the company and initially suggested that it

wanted three board seats, sources familiar with the matter said.

Sunnyvale, California-based Synopsys ( SNPS ) has for decades been

one of the main suppliers to Advanced Micro Devices, Nvidia and

others of software used in determining how to arrange the tens

of billions of transistors that make up semiconductor chips.

Nvidia in December revealed it had invested $2 billion in

Synopsys ( SNPS ) as part of an expanded multi-year tie-up to jointly

develop ​new tools for designing products across industries

using Nvidia's AI ​technology.