Technology
SoftBank is currently planning to sell ARM to Nvidia for over $40 billion.
SoftBank is reportedly planning to sell ARM chipmaker to Nvidia as early as next week in a transaction worth more than $40 billion, Wall Street Journal reported.
Rumors of the deal started to circulate in July, and Nvidia was confirmed to be the only suitor in formal negotiations with SoftBank. The transaction, if it proceeds, will be one of the biggest ever in the chip industry and will undoubtedly face strong regulatory oversight. According to the WSJ, the corporations have been communicating "exclusively" for weeks.
SoftBank acquired ARM for $31 billion in 2016. British company chips control mobile device processors for companies including Apple , Samsung and Qualcomm. ARM has likely only risen in demand following the purchase of SoftBank, with Microsoft rendering ARM-based Surface and Windows for ARM, with Apple preparing to move future Macs to ARM-based chipsets.
Nvidia is the leading manufacturer of GPUs that ARM still manufactures, but other than its Tegra series of handheld chipsets used in products such as the Nintendo Switch, Nvidia doesn't know anything with CPU architecture or computer hardware. The sale of ARM is expected to change that.
