NVIDIA Purchasing ARM is definitely off the table - confirms SoftBank
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Kaarme
Good. If Softbank absolutely must sell, hopefully they will find another buyer, who's more neutral.
rl66
Good news 🙂
fantaskarsef
Now let's just wait until the dust settles, and ARM gets sold to another company, eventually ending with another company creating a market position that's nuts, but then it's okay because they paid more bribes.
And people will rejoice for no reason at all 😀
cryohellinc
Wonderful news. I'm glad this deal didn't go through. Independent ARM is a win for both the industry and, most importantly - consumers.
Horus-Anhur
It's best that ARM remains a neutral company.
H83
My thoughts exactly.
No Nvidia, no AMD, no Intel, Apple or other such companies.
ARM is too important to belong to another giant tech company!
Stormyandcold
$1.25billion wasted. I'd sue tbh and if Nvidia doesn't sue, then, if there is a 3rd party purchase of ARM later on I'd put a stop to that transaction as well.
tunejunky
as a Californian living in Silicon Valley, i must say your opinion sounds local 😎
but this was jinxed from the start by the arrogance of Nvidia.
IF Nvidia had made the (political) rounds hat in hand, showing job growth and saying American technology will make this a growth opportunity... they would've had a chance.
but under-reported buzz from Apple, AMD, Qualcomm, Intel and Mediatek (covered extensively in local "newspaper")
submarined this deal.
a few well justified cut-outs could've saved the deal and made it more palatable, but Nvidia was acting like a fat kid at the candy counter. (think Charlie & the Chocolate Factory).
Krizby
heh, hopefully this will keep Nvidia's workforce remain focus on making GPU and not spread thin over too many products (that I don't care about).
tunejunky
chances are it will be acquired by patent pimps (SPAC -special purpose acquisition company) where a shell company raises cash to buy a company listed on an Exchange without (due formality) process and become listed as a result. and has access to all IP of the listed company. right now ARM is radioactively "hot" for traditional buyers.
Kaarme
Mr. Leather Jacket would have been unable to do it. He has been beyond great for the technological and economical prowess of his company, but his personality wouldn't probably allow him to convince bureaucrats of anything. Furthermore, "American technology" can have a hollow echo currently in many parts of the world, such as Europe, where Facebook, Google, Apple, and others have found troubled waters. Not even in the USA all are happy with the (American) technology giants' continuous stunts and clashes with the spirit of the law. Let's not forget that Nvidia wouldn't have needed to convince businessmen or industry people, it was indeed officials, whose very job is to be skeptical of corporate moves.
tunejunky
You Forget - Nvidia is an American company. there is no lack of Jingoism in the hall of Congress or in the State Assembly.
Nvidia is NOT a Social Media company (where all of the anti-tech heat is centered in the US).
and you are clearly not an American if you think that the job of officials is to be skeptical of business interests. there are only two departments in the US government that would even care (S.E.C. & F.T.C.)
Dribble
They will refloat it on the stock market. It will be tricky as old ARM was super lean, it's designs were simple and could survive on it's license revenues but that has been changing as ARM has gone from low powered and simple to real x86 competitor. The fact that Softbank were looking for a buyer suggests it's not in itself that profitable - tough to go head to head with Intel and AMD without a big backer.
Kaarme
What good would convincing the Americans alone do? Softbank isn't American, ARM isn't American. British and European officials were eyeing the deal with skeptical eyes. It would be a deal dead in the water if it wasn't accepted by all major market areas. Chinese officials as well would have likely been worried about a Japanese/British entity becoming American.
waltc3
I agree. nVidia would have been difficult to trust, imo. What ARM is doing from what I read is going public with a stock IPO. We shall see. ARM wants to list in New York, but some UK fans are apparently not too happy...;) I think it will end up in the New York exchange, though, anyway.
ruthan
Hmm from point of Softbank as investor is not good.
With ARM in their pocket Nvidia would be able to to compete with Intel and AMD.
Government is against this deal, but its fine with x86 monopoly 🙁
I wonder which buyer would be good enough i really hope that it would be evil as Apple, Sony or MS, which would completely close it.. Nvidia would better that other buyers.
Well, maybe Nvidia would get angry and with buy and improve other architecture like Power from IBM or RISC-V or make some its own..
They have enough money, pride and anger to make it.. and it could be good thing.
Venix
I guess Nvidia skipped the bureaucratic step of making "donations" to the right people on the right places.
Horus-Anhur
Intel created the X86 ISA. The government never intruded in this monopoly, because of this.
The only entity that prevented Intel from complete domination of the X86 market was IBM, that demanded multiple suppliers of CPUs.
That's why AMD, Cyrix and Via also had licenses for X86. But after IBM lost the X86 control of the market, Intel stopped giving their X86 CPU design to these companies.
So AMD, Via and Cyrix had to design and manufacture their own X86 CPUs.
ARM on the other hand was always an ISA open for licensing. So having one single company with control of ARM would be bad.
It was bad enough as it was when Intel dominated the CPU market. No need to repeat the same thing if we can help it.
H83
Actually ARM is very profitable and they are going to continue to be for the near future.
The problem is that Softbank invested billions on some stupid startups, like WeWork, that were terrible investments and lost those billions on the proccess...
Since then they have been trying to sell their most prized assets, like ARM, to raise cash to cover their gigantic blunders...
tunejunky
you have a logical mind.
but laws are not always logical (or precise).
the fact of the matter is a purchase of ARM by an American company brings American laws into play, in this case the Anti-Trust Act.
these issues have been "massaged" before, most notably back when Ford bought Jaguar in the 90's. Ford (being a multinational) understood issues within the industry in both countries.
and just reality, American laws are the standard setter in international business and finance. almost every E.U. law on business standards and practices mirror the American ones. certainly the same for Japan and Korea (excepting Anti-Trust cut outs for keiretsu, etc..).
so any review of a possible American anti-trust situation (F.T.C.) would automatically trigger one in U.K. and E.U. (if it were an company based in E.U.).
