Seventeen months after NVIDIA announced its intention to acquire Arm, the deal has been called off.
Rumours of the end of the agreement were swirling this morning with the media working on overdrive to confirm the news.
Initial reaction to the acquisition ranged from excitement to concern over NVIDIA’s potential dominance in the semiconductor industry. However, the final nail came from regulatory challenges from both sides of the Atlantic — hurdles which proved too far to clear.
According to NVIDIA and SoftBank Group (SBG), the parties agreed to terminate the agreement because of “significant regulatory challenges preventing the consummation of the transaction, despite good faith efforts by the parties.”
Following the ending of the agreement, Arm will be gunning for an initial public offering by end March 2023.
“Arm is becoming a centre of innovation not only in the mobile phone revolution, but also in cloud computing, automotive, the Internet of Things and the metaverse, and has entered its second growth phase. “We will take this opportunity and start preparing to take Arm public, and to make even further progress,” said Masayoshi Son, Representative Director, Corporate Officer, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of SBG.
“Arm has a bright future, and we’ll continue to support them as a proud licensee for decades to come. Though we won’t be one company, we will partner closely with Arm. I expect Arm to be the most important CPU architecture of the next decade,” said Jensen Huang (top), Founder and Chief Executive Officer of NVIDIA.
SBG will retain the US$1.25 billion pre-paid by NVIDIA, which will be recorded as profit in the fourth quarter, and NVIDIA will retain its 20-year Arm licence.
Entelechy Asia 