[ad_1]
After months of indiscretions and the confirmations of the last hours, it is official: Nvidia to acquire ARM (except the IoT Services Group) by SoftBank with a valued transaction 40 billion dollars. The understanding must close in 18 months and will be subject to approval by the UK, China, EU and US market competition bodies.
According to Nvidia, the union of its experience in the world of artificial intelligence with the vast ecosystem of ARM will give the opportunity to create a stronger company, accelerating innovation and driving expansion into new, fast-growing markets. SoftBank will continue to indirectly participate in ARM through a less than 10% stake in Nvidia.
“This union has incredible benefits for both companies, our customers and the industry. For the ARM ecosystem, the combination will augment ARM’s research and development capabilities and expand its IP portfolio with Nvidia GPUs and artificial intelligence technology, “said Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia.”Nvidia is the perfect partner for ARM“said Masayoshi Son, President and CEO of SoftBank, and Simon Segars, CEO of ARM, echoed” the enthusiasm to join Nvidia to write the next chapter together“.
ARM headquarters will remain in Cambridge and Nvidia has already made it known that it will invest heavily in creating a new research pole on artificial intelligence, creating among other things also a supercomputer based on ARM CPU and Nvidia GPU. Nvidia intends to retain the ARM brand name and identity, and the intellectual property will also continue to be registered in the UK.
However, the most important thing “ARM will continue to manage its open license model while maintaining global neutrality with customers which has been critical to its success, with 180 billion chips delivered to date by its licensees. ARM partners will also benefit from the offerings of both companies, including many Nvidia innovations.”Reads a press release that unravels one of the most delicate nodes of this transfer of ownership, since ARM architectures are the basis of the projects of Apple, Qualcomm and many other chip manufacturers.
Regarding the financial terms of the agreement, approved by all the boards of directors involved, Nvidia will pay SoftBank a total of $ 21.5 billion in Nvidia common stock and $ 12 billion in cash (funded with cash), of which 2 billion payable upon signature. SoftBank may also receive up to $ 5 billion in cash or common stock if ARM achieves specific financial goals. Nvidia will also issue 1.5 billion capital to take over ARM employees (more than 6 thousand).
Jen-Hsun Huang, CEO of Nvidia
With this acquisition Nvidia gets access to a CPU designer, becoming a full company like Intel and AMD, capable of offering both graphics chips and processors. Thanks to ARM, the American company also expands its fleet of software programmers (from 2 to more than 15 million), expanding the potential reach of its technologies in the market.
“The Nvidia-ARM deal isn’t just the biggest in the field of semiconductors by volume with an outlay of 40 billion dollars, but I think the one with the greatest impactPat Moorhead, principal analyst at Moor Research, said in a statement. “I think the deal is perfect as ARM plays in areas where Nvidia is not or is not as successful, while Nvidia plays in many areas where ARM is not or is not very successful.”
“SoftBank’s investment has enabled ARM to gain confidence in the data center, automotive, IoT and NPU markets,” added Moorhead. “I think adding Nvidia to it will only make it stronger as long as it lives up to its commitment to let ARM do what it does best, which is to create and license technology in a global neutral way.”
