Tuesday, February 8th 2022

NVIDIA Acquisition of Arm Collapses, UK Company to Seek IPO

NVIDIA's long-awaited acquisition of Arm Ltd. is collapsing, confirm Financial Times and Reuters. According to the latest information, the deal is not happening, and the previously agreed terms are no longer valid. As we now know, NVIDIA will have to pay Softbank (Arm's owner) a break-up fee of $1.25 billion, which was the deal that the two settled on if the acquisition fails. NVIDIA has originally planned to purchase Arm for $40 billion. However, the regulators from UK and EU have been blocking the deal from happening on the terms that it would hurt competition and block innovation.

What is next for Arm Ltd. is to go public and list itself on one of the world's biggest stock exchanges, either domestically or overseas in the US. The IPO efforts of Arm are estimated to be worth around $80 billion, representing a double amount of what NVIDIA wanted to purchase the company for.

Update 08:35 UTC: Here is the official press release from NVIDIA and Softbank below:

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) and SoftBank Group Corp. ("SBG" or "SoftBank") today announced the termination of the previously announced transaction whereby NVIDIA would acquire Arm Limited ("Arm") from SBG. The parties agreed to terminate the Agreement because of significant regulatory challenges preventing the consummation of the transaction, despite good faith efforts by the parties. Arm will now start preparations for a public offering.

"Arm has a bright future, and we'll continue to support them as a proud licensee for decades to come," said Jensen Huang, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of NVIDIA. "Arm is at the center of the important dynamics in computing. Though we won't be one company, we will partner closely with Arm. The significant investments that Masa has made have positioned Arm to expand the reach of the Arm CPU beyond client computing to supercomputing, cloud, AI and robotics. I expect Arm to be the most important CPU architecture of the next decade."

SBG today also announced that, in coordination with Arm, it will start preparations for a public offering of Arm within the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023. SBG believes Arm's technology and intellectual property will continue to be at the center of mobile computing and the development of artificial intelligence.

"Arm is becoming a center of innovation not only in the mobile phone revolution, but also in cloud computing, automotive, the Internet of Things and the metaverse, and has entered its second growth phase," said Masayoshi Son, Representative Director, Corporate Officer, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of SoftBank Group Corp. "We will take this opportunity and start preparing to take Arm public, and to make even further progress."

Mr. Son continued, "I want to thank Jensen and his talented team at NVIDIA for trying to bring together these two great companies and wish them all the success."

NVIDIA and SBG had announced that they had entered into a definitive agreement, under which NVIDIA would acquire Arm from SoftBank, on September 13, 2020. In accordance with the terms of the agreement, SBG* will retain the $1.25 billion prepaid by NVIDIA, which will be recorded as profit in the fourth quarter, and NVIDIA will retain its 20-year Arm license.

* 24.99% of Arm shares are attributable to SoftBank Vision Fund 1.
Source: via Reuters
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94 Comments on NVIDIA Acquisition of Arm Collapses, UK Company to Seek IPO

#76
Space Lynx
Astronaut
Minus InfinityI've owned two Arm products since birth.
It's hard not to buy a monopoly item that is hidden in devices and not chosen by the actual consumer due to lack of competition, I suppose
Posted on Reply
#77
Kanan
Tech Enthusiast & Gamer
Minus InfinityI've owned two Arm products since birth.
Probably the ones you know of.
Posted on Reply
#78
RedBear
Now that it's officially dead and all, I mainly wonder what kind of effect this will have on the development and adoption of RISC-V. I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that Nvidia's attempt at acquiring ARM had a positive effect on RISC-V's fortunes as an alternative to ARM's dominance.
Posted on Reply
#79
Kanan
Tech Enthusiast & Gamer
RedBearNow that it's officially dead and all, I mainly wonder what kind of effect this will have on the development and adoption of RISC-V. I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that Nvidia's attempt at acquiring ARM had a positive effect on RISC-V's fortunes as an alternative to ARM's dominance.
Well Apple saber-rattled with news of "changing to RISC V" or development of, I bet this is done and dusted now. Otherwise I didn't hear much about it
Posted on Reply
#80
Upgrayedd
How is it over a billion dollars? That's incredible. Nvidia spent over a billion dollars on absolutely nothing.
Posted on Reply
#81
Kanan
Tech Enthusiast & Gamer
UpgrayeddHow is it over a billion dollars? That's incredible. Nvidia spent over a billion dollars on absolutely nothing.
It's funny to me that someone said this is "pennies" for them, I think it's a little more than that.
Posted on Reply
#82
Space Lynx
Astronaut
UpgrayeddHow is it over a billion dollars? That's incredible. Nvidia spent over a billion dollars on absolutely nothing.
don't worry, its not really money to them, they will just raise prices next gen enough to make up for it. you will pay for it :D
Posted on Reply
#83
Kanan
Tech Enthusiast & Gamer
CallandorWoTdon't worry, its not really money to them, they will just raise prices next gen enough to make up for it. you will pay for it :D
You mean keep prices up? They already did that
Posted on Reply
#84
Space Lynx
Astronaut
KananYou mean keep prices up? They already did that
they will do it even more next time :D
Posted on Reply
#85
R-T-B
CallandorWoTmaybe if it wasn't ARM routers wouldn't be used as botnet brute force hubs for DDOS attacks. maybe if some proper cpu's were in them DDOS attacks would not happen at all, who knows
Nothing to do with ARM, and everything to do with routers being a consumer product lots of time with very little software updates, all while basically being a linux minicomputer.
CallandorWoTI think I get it now, thanks for the explanation, much appreciated. You are correct, I really didn't know as much as I thought I did.

So if ARM licensed say... IP to make a chip to put on say the RGB of a gtx 1070, and this chip was made in China, how do we know that telemetry of some kind is not built in to that RGB arm chip on the gtx 1070? Just curious... a hypothetical scenario... if you will... I only ask because I remember reading something like this once:

www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies

full disclose i only read like the first paragraph there, but yeah
China is more likely to do that with their own inhouse MIPS designs, but you could theoretically do that with whatever. Including the American Intel ME and AMD PSP in every PC. It's a fun world.
Posted on Reply
#86
chodaboy19
UpgrayeddHow is it over a billion dollars? That's incredible. Nvidia spent over a billion dollars on absolutely nothing.
Part of that payment also pays for Nvidia's 20 year ARM license.
Posted on Reply
#87
Kanan
Tech Enthusiast & Gamer
chodaboy19Part of that payment also pays for Nvidia's 20 year ARM license.
Source?
Posted on Reply
#90
TheLostSwede
News Editor
RedBearNow that it's officially dead and all, I mainly wonder what kind of effect this will have on the development and adoption of RISC-V. I might be wrong, but I was under the impression that Nvidia's attempt at acquiring ARM had a positive effect on RISC-V's fortunes as an alternative to ARM's dominance.
I think it will continue, as RISC-V is technically royalty free, unless you work with someone like SiFive or Imagination Technologies.
Posted on Reply
#91
arni-gx
so, today, nvidia biggest dream for planning to make their own CPU with ARM technology is finllay has ended, forever.......
Posted on Reply
#92
awesomesauce
arni-gxso, today, nvidia biggest dream for planning to make their own CPU with ARM technology is finllay has ended, forever.......
they already do with the nvidia shield no?
Posted on Reply
#93
Panther_Seraphin
awesomesaucethey already do with the nvidia shield no?
Tegra is ARM based.

Plus they wanted to do with ARM with things like Physx etc. Make it a benefit ONLY to Nvidia and eventually make it so Nvidia have a 10-50% benefit vs everyone else. Any money this is purely for the Automotive industry with self driving and infotainment becoming a massive market and only growing.
Posted on Reply
#94
r9
KananIt's funny to me that someone said this is "pennies" for them, I think it's a little more than that.
Game Over
Please insert 1.25B to play again
Posted on Reply
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