Source: Tencent Technology
Tencent Technology News on July 31, according to two people familiar with the matter, the US chip company NVIDIA is negotiating to acquire its British chip design subsidiary Arm from SoftBank by cash and stock. This transaction valued ARM at more than 32 billion. Dollar.
It is reported that the negotiations began in recent months, before Nvidia had approached SoftBank on potential acquisitions, and SoftBank has always been seeking to sell a series of other assets. People familiar with the matter said that there is no guarantee that the negotiations will be successful, and some issues related to the transaction still need to be resolved.
People familiar with the matter did not disclose the exact details of the transaction price or method, but the proposed transaction includes cash and stocks, and the valuation of Arm is higher than the $32 billion that SoftBank paid for its acquisition in 2016.
The use of stock trading will enable Nvidia to take advantage of the opportunity that its stock price has risen 151% in the past year. During this period, Nvidia's market value rose to $261 billion, surpassing its older rival Intel.
The acquisition of Arm will further consolidate Nvidia's central position in the semiconductor industry, because Arm's technology is finding wider applications beyond mobile devices, data centers and personal computers (including Apple Mac).
Arm will change Nvidia's product lineup. So far, the latter's products are mainly concentrated in the high-end chip market. Its powerful
This transaction may sound the alarm for other large authorized companies of Arm, including Apple, Broadcom and Qualcomm, who may be concerned about a unique asset being acquired by potential competitors such as Nvidia.
This sale will mark an astonishing reversal of the strategy pursued by SoftBank founder Sun Zhengyi. He once announced that ARM will be the key to the future of this technology investment group. Dan, according to people familiar with the matter, Arm failed to flourish under the leadership of SoftBank.
Mirabaud analyst Neil Campling pointed out that since SoftBank acquired Arm in 2016, the latter’s annual revenue has increased from US$1.2 billion to US$1.9 billion, while Nvidia’s annual revenue growth within the same time frame About twice.
graphics processors (handling data-intensive tasks) are usually sold to PC gamers, scientific researchers, developers of artificial intelligence and self-driving cars, and cryptocurrency miners.
Last month, SoftBank said it had divested an IoT business from Arm and transferred it to a new company controlled by it. This decision deprived Arm of what should be a high-growth engine into the future of 5G connectivity.
SoftBank chief operating officer Marcelo Claure said in an interview last month that the Internet of Things business requires a lot of investment, which hurts Arm’s performance and distracts management.
Just a few weeks after the British referendum decided to leave the European Union, supporters of SoftBank's 2016 acquisition argued that this was a sign of confidence in the country's economy. However, critics, including Arm's founder Hermann Hauser (Hermann Hauser), said the acquisition was a typical example of Britain selling its most valuable assets to the highest bidder.
In order to appease the political review of SoftBank’s acquisition of Arm, which is by far the largest technology acquisition by a British company, the Japanese group had to make a series of binding commitments to the company, including increasing the number of Arm employees and retaining them. Its Cambridge headquarters.