TL;DR
- Nvidia has announced that it will no longer buy chip designer Arm.
- The graphics company cited major regulatory hurdles as a reason for the deal being called off.
Back in September 2020, Nvidia announced a $40 billion deal to buy influential chip designer Arm from Japanese owner Softbank. Now, Nvidia has revealed that the deal is off, citing “significant regulatory challenges.”
The graphics company announced the termination of the deal in a news release on its website, saying there were major regulatory hurdles despite “good faith efforts” by the two firms. This statement comes after several regulatory bodies, including those in Europe and the US, either expressed concerns or took action against it.
“I expect Arm to be the most important CPU architecture of the next decade,” Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement, adding that the two companies would still work closely together.
Arm has since announced that its next step would be going public. Its parent company Softbank will also receive a $1.25 billion breakup fee from Nvidia as a result of the deal not going ahead.
Arm is perhaps the most important player in the mobile technology space right now, with its architecture used by the vast majority of smartphones as well as gaming consoles (Nintendo Switch) and a growing number of laptops. The company also designs CPU cores and GPUs that are used in chipsets from Qualcomm, Samsung, Mediatek, and more.
