NVIDIA’s US$40 billion acquisition of Arm has gotten Google, Microsoft and Qualcomm all worked up. According to reports, the three tech companies have made their concerns known to regulators in China, the European Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
Top of their mind is how NVIDIA could manage Arm’s licensing agreements going forward — all have arrangements with Arm that could be impacted following the acquisition from Softbank. This concern could spread further as Arm has licensing agreement with more than 500 companies.
Even NVIDIA’s assurance that it would not change how Arm interacts with other businesses is not enough.
NVIDIA’s move was to strenthen its position in the AI space.
“Our combination will create a company fabulously positioned for the age of AI. Uniting NVIDIA’s AI computing capabilities with the vast ecosystem of Arm’s CPU, we can advance computing from the cloud, smartphones, PCs, self-driving cars and robotics, to edge IoT, and expand AI computing to every corner of the globe,” said Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of NVIDIA during the acquisition announcement.
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