NVIDIA and SoftBank Group announced that the previously announced acquisition of Arm is terminated. Both sides agreed to terminate the agreement due to significant regulatory challenges that prevent the consummation of the transaction, despite the good faith efforts from NVIDIA and SoftBank Group.
Arm public offering
SoftBank Group also stated that it is starting preparations for a public offering of Arm, in coordination with the company, before 31 March of 2023. SoftBank Group believes that Arm’s technology and intellectual property will continue to be crucial for mobile computing and the development of artificial intelligence.
According to the agreement, SoftBank Group will retain the $1.25 billion prepaid by NVIDIA and it will be recorded as profit in the company’s fourth-quarter results. NVIDIA will retain its 20-year Arm license. Jensen Huang, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of NVIDIA said,
« Arm has a bright future, and we’ll continue to support them as a proud licensee for decades to come. Arm is at the center of the important dynamics in computing. Though we won’t be one company, we will partner closely with Arm. The significant investments that Masa has made have positioned Arm to expand the reach of the Arm CPU beyond client computing to supercomputing, cloud, AI and robotics. I expect Arm to be the most important CPU architecture of the next decade. »