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Nvidia pays $40 billion to acquire Arm

As PC builders get ready for the release of Nvidia’s new GPUs, the firm itself has been making a purchase of its own.

On Sunday, Nvidia announced that it would be acquiring Arm from Softbank in a transaction valued at $40 billion (~R667 billion). Just a bit more expensive than those new RTX 30 series GPUs.

This is a rather big deal as Arm semiconductors are used by Intel, Samsung, AMD, Apple, Qualcomm, Lenovo and so many more.

While this is good news for Nvidia, the firm’s chief executive officer Jensen Huang says that together, Arm and Nvidia will work to create a “premier computing company for the age of artificial intelligence”.

“In the years ahead, trillions of computers running AI will create a new internet-of-things that is thousands of times larger than today’s internet-of-people. Our combination will create a company fabulously positioned for the age of AI,” said Huang of the acquisition.

“Simon Segars and his team at Arm have built an extraordinary company that is contributing to nearly every technology market in the world. Uniting Nvidia’s AI computing capabilities with the vast ecosystem of Arm’s CPU, we can advance computing from the cloud, smartphones, PCs, self-driving cars and robotics, to edge IoT, and expand AI computing to every corner of the globe,” the CEO added.

Acquisitions often leave the future of the acquired firm in a state of flux but Nvidia appears to be intent on maintaining the status quo at Arm.

Arm will continue operating its open-licensing model and its headquarters will stay in Cambridge in the UK. In fact, Nvidia will be building an AI research facility at Arm’s campus.

“Arm and Nvidia share a vision and passion that ubiquitous, energy-efficient computing will help address the world’s most pressing issues from climate change to healthcare, from agriculture to education. Delivering on this vision requires new approaches to hardware and software and a long-term commitment to research and development. By bringing together the technical strengths of our two companies we can accelerate our progress and create new solutions that will enable a global ecosystem of innovators,” Arm CEO, Simon Segars said of the acquisition.

Now the long process of regulatory approvals begins and this will have to take place in the UK, China, EU and US before the deal is finalised. This process could take 18 months without hiccups.

As Forbes points out however, the likelihood of this deal being overturned is low. Arm and Nvidia don’t really cross over in terms of business models and the possibility of a monopoly being created are low.

We are curious to see what this acquisition means for Nvidia’s future. Product diversity is generally a good thing so we don’t foresee this hurting the firm though this is 2020 and stranger things have happened.

[Source – Nvidia]

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