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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."
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
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Friday December 03 2021, @04:54PM
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.
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