Chipmaker Nvidia is not going to take over the chip designer Arm. SoftBank, Arm’s parent company, would go public with the company instead.
Last year Nvidia spent about $40 million for Arm, one of the most influential designers of chip architecture. However, opposition from various regulators in the EU, the US and the UK has now stopped the deal. Nvidia has decided that, according to the Financial Times.
For some time, there had been signs that the deal would not go well, but Nvidia would now have made the decision. If the sale had gone through, it would have been the biggest in the chip world.
Arm is one of the leading designers of (mobile) chip architecture, and many chip manufacturers, including Qualcomm, Samsung and Apple, license these designs. That Nvidia, itself a chip builder, could acquire exclusive rights to Arm, therefore, caused concern. Qualcomm and Microsoft, among others, protested against the deal.
Nvidia seems to have given up the fight now. SoftBank would receive a $1.25 billion fee to stop the deal. The investor would now be working with Arm on an IPO.