If rumors are to be believed, NVIDIA is interested to acquire Acorn RISC Machine (ARM), a British based chip designer and the sister company of SoftBank.
A report by Bloomberg stated that NVIDIA had contacted SoftBank (The Company that funds ARM) to show its interest in acquiring the company. The talks are in the initial phase, so other investors might also jump in. The highest bidder may win the company.
For those who are not aware of what ARM is, it works on innovation by designing chips. To receive a sturdy return of invest amount, SoftBank will publicly list the ARM to receive the highest Bid. SoftBank had spent 32 billion dollars to purchase ARM holdings in 2016. ARM also holds a 49 percent stake in Chinese JV, ARM china, where the Hopu investment maintains the 51% stake among all the Chinese investors.
The success of this deal will make this acquiring the biggest in the silicon chip development and design industry. Still, many obstacles are to be faced by the bidding companies in the path that is not limited to continual paper and legal work, followed by the current customers trying to protest against the proposal until they receive confirmation of equal access to the technology of ARM.
SoftBank being a major investor in NVIDIA, invested 4 billion dollars in 2017, and the entire SoftBanks’ $100 Billion Vision Fund in 2019 was liquidated into NVIDIA; hence NVIDIA should acquire ARM.
If NVIDIA and SoftBank can reach mutual terms, NVIDIA will add another company to its streak of purchases. All those who don’t know, NVIDIA bought Israel’s Mellanox Technologies on the 27th of April after a long investment discussion of 13 months.
In May, NVIDIA also bought an open networking software company, Cumulus Networks. Based on these purchases, analysts conclude they will be releasing a GPU card upgrade supercycle and are also taking advantage of increased demand for Data Centres and AI applications.