Qualcomm Expresses Interest in an Enormous Investment in Arm if NVIDIA Acquisition Is Blocked
Published on June 14, 2021
- The probes over NVIDIA’s Arm acquisition are still on, and Qualcomm is stepping in to express interest.
- The American chipmaker states they are too willing to invest $40 billion, together with Tesla, Amazon, and others.
- NVIDIA responds by saying that it’s not a matter of money but having complementary knowledge and expertise.
Qualcomm has publicly expressed its interest and intention to immediately invest $40 billion in Arm if the UK regulators block NVIDIA’s acquisition deal. This is the same amount that the graphics company paid to reach a deal with SoftBank, the owner of Arm, back in September 2020. That acquisition was destined to go through the hindmost scrutiny, as Arm is a valuable British company and also an open force in global technological development.
In April 2021, the UK government ordered the competition watchdog to assess the implications of this deal, and the clouds over NVIDIA haven’t been lifted yet. Of course, both entities have underlined that they will remain separate up to a point, that Arm’s patents will remain open for anyone to use and benefit from, and that the UK will have a lot to gain from NVIDIA’s expertise in building supercomputers for the country’s R&D centers.
Now, with much time passed and a probe from the U.S. added on NVIDIA’s back, new drones have appeared outside Arm’s next. Qualcomm says they’re ready to invest $40 billion in Arm, and the difference with them is that they won’t be the only ones who will own and control Arm. As the American chipmaker states, they have already explored the interest of other big companies, and Tesla and Amazon are reportedly among those who would jump aboard a new kind of deal immediately.
Qualcomm was among the first entities to express concerns about how NVIDIA’s deal with SoftBank on the acquisition of Arm would harm the latter's independence and potentially hamper competition. At the very least, it would be a destabilizing market development that would make things worse for everyone but NVIDIA.
For the graphics company, all of that is baseless, and they don’t believe that the entities who get to work with Arm should be judged by how much they’re willing to invest. For NVIDIA, Arm needs the knowledge and technology that they have to offer in order to meet the demands of the new AI era that dawns. The two have complementary technologies, so together, they could form a complete entity that would develop novel technologies that will push the envelope forward.
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