We already knew that ARM was up for acquisition. Also, some reports also said that Nvidia was one of the companies which was interested in acquiring it. Today, the deal has been confirmed. Nvidia finally acquires ARM for $40 billion.
This is the largest acquisition in the semiconductor industry. UK-based chip designer ARM has been finally acquired by Nvidia – which is mostly known for GPUs. The deal will close in about 18 months. For the time being, both – ARM and Nvidia will continue to operate individually. Once everything is completed, ARM will be operating under Nvidia.
However, most things aren’t going to change. ARM will still continue to have its headquarters in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Also, CEO of ARM – Simon Segars – and his management team will still be working for ARM.
This acquisition, as per Nvidia, would be focused on creating a leading computing company for the age of AI. However, we think Nvidia might as well enter the mobile computing world by producing their own SOCs.
Nvidia has produced their own chips earlier – Tegra – which is seen in devices like Nvidia Shield and Nintendo Switch. Nvidia Shield was costly but was also one of the best devices in that category. So, with the acquisition of ARM, we just expect things to get better.
SoftBank – the ex-parent company of ARM – will continue to have its ownership in Nvidia. Their ownership in Nvidia is expected to be under 10%. However, in this way, they’ll be able to watch ARM’s long-term success.
The acquisition will go through regulatory scrutiny – before the deal is closed. ARM and Nvidia aren’t competing. However, there might be some issues as Apple – in the past – has continued to decline to use Nvidia GPUs on their systems. And the tech giant had recently announced that they’ll be completely shifting to ARM-based processors for their computers.
