SoylentNews

U.S. Federal Trade Commission Sues to Block Nvidia's Arm Acquisition

posted by martyb on Friday December 03 2021, @05:47AM   
from the the-larger-they-are... dept.

takyon writes:

FTC Crashes NVIDIA's Party by Suing to Block its $40 Billion Deal To Acquire Arm Holdings

NVIDIA is now facing the most stringent test yet to its planned acquisition of the chip designer Arm Holdings.

To wit, the US FTC is now suing NVIDIA to block the $40 billion deal. FTC Bureau of Competition Director, Holly Vedova, said in a statement:

"The FTC is suing to block the largest semiconductor chip merger in history to prevent a chip conglomerate from stifling the innovation pipeline for next-generation technologies."

Vedova went on to note:

"Tomorrow's technologies depend on preserving today's competitive, cutting-edge chip markets. This proposed deal would distort Arm's incentives in chip markets and allow the combined firm to unfairly undermine Nvidia's rivals."

FTC press release.

Also at NYT, The Verge, and Reuters.

Previously;
Nvidia's $40 Billion ARM Acquisition: "All but Dead"?
European Commission Extends Probe of Nvidia's Arm Acquisition

---

Original Submission

• Re:ARM Chair Re:ARM Chair (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday December 03 2021, @11:45AM (2 children)

  by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday December 03 2021, @11:45AM (#1201795)

  I have lost track, is Softbank still holding Arm?

  Historical note, I bought into Softbank stock shortly after the Arm acquisition. Even with a Trump endorsement following soon after my purchase, it didn't jump high enough to fund an early retirement. It is actually quite amazing how insignificant Arm seems to be to the Softbank bottom line.

  --
  🌻🌻 [google.com]

  Parent

  Starting Score:	1		point
  Karma-Bonus Modifier		+1
  Total Score:		2

• Re:ARM Chair (Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Friday December 03 2021, @01:52PM

  by TheRaven (270) on Friday December 03 2021, @01:52PM (#1201804) Journal

  Arm is an infrastructure company according to Bill Gates' definition, which means that the overwhelming majority of the money in the ecosystem is made by other companies. Apple alone makes far more money from the Arm ecosystem than Arm does. This is part of their value (to the world, and in particular to their partners, not to their shareholders): they are small and independent. SoftBank, from what I can tell, didn't really understand this and thought that owning Arm would increase the value of the other bits of the Arm ecosystem that they owned. They also thought that Arm should be able to capitalise more on their core position in the ecosystem, not realising that any attempt by Arm to do that would destroy the value of Arm in that ecosystem.

  --
  sudo mod me up

  Parent

• Re:ARM Chair (Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday December 03 2021, @04:54PM

  by takyon (881) <takyonNO@SPAMsoylentnews.org> on Friday December 03 2021, @04:54PM (#1201851) Journal

  Notice that the $40 billion Nvidia offered to buy Arm is not much more than the $31 billion SoftBank paid.

  There is no good reason for Nvidia to buy Arm unless they plan to screw over the other licensees. Theoretically they could get a leg up on custom Arm CPU designs, but they can probably do that without an acquisition, just like Apple has.

  RISC-V is waiting in the wings in case Arm is FUBAR, but it is a short-term hassle to switch to RISC-V. So most of the Arm licensees are bitterly opposed to the acquisition attempt.

  --
  [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]

  Parent