US Nvidia, Japan's Softbank
Decided to acquire UK's Arm for $40 billion
Arm maintains business, dismissing concerns


Nvidia has been tentatively selected as the new owner of Arm.

On the 14th, Nvidia officially announced its acquisition of Softbank's Arm for $40 billion, or approximately 47.36 trillion won. Softbank will reap a profit of $8 billion from the sale of Arm, which it acquired for $32 billion in 2016.

Under the acquisition, NVIDIA will pay SoftBank 44.3 million common shares and $12 billion in cash, for a total consideration of $21.5 billion. SoftBank may receive up to $5 billion in cash or common shares from NVIDIA, depending on Arm's future financial performance.

Nvidia will issue $1.5 billion worth of equity to Arm employees. Arm's IoT services group will not be included in the deal. The transaction is expected to close in approximately 18 months, subject to approval from relevant regulatory authorities in the United States, China, the United Kingdom and the European Union.

The world's largest GPU and IP companies unite.

Nvidia is a GPU specialist company that surpassed Intel to become the most valuable US semiconductor company in terms of market capitalization in July.

Arm is a company that designs low-power semiconductor IP cores and licenses them to other companies. Its representative product is the 'Cortex' product line, which is widely used as a smartphone or IoT core.

Some are concerned that fellow semiconductor company Nvidia may restrict Arm from selling licenses to other companies in order to keep competitors at bay.

In response, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang drew a clear line between the two, stating, "We will maintain our existing Arm business." This effectively eliminates the need for semiconductor companies around the world to seek alternatives like RISC-V.

This acquisition seems to have been conscious of the British government's negative view that it would be like an American company (Nvidia) stealing the intellectual property rights of a British company (Arm), and Nvidia decided to keep Arm's intellectual property rights registered in the UK.

Additionally, Nvidia has decided to establish an AI R&D center in Cambridge, England, where Arm is headquartered.