Softbank's Sale of ARM To Nvidia Collapses, ARM To IPO

According to Reuters, SoftBank's sale of ARM to U.S. chipmaker Nvidia has collapsed. Instead, SoftBank is planning to proceed with an initial public offering (IPO) with ARM CEO Simon Segars expected to resign, handing the job to president Rene Haas. From the report: The deal, announced in 2020, had faced several regulatory hurdles. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued to block it in December, arguing that competition in the nascent markets for chips in self-driving cars and a new category of networking chips could be hurt if Nvidia carried out the purchase. The buyout is also under the scrutiny of British and EU regulators amid concerns that it could push up prices and reduce choice and innovation.

The sale would have marked an early exit from Arm for Softbank, which acquired it for $32 billion. Chief Executive Masayoshi Son has lauded the potential of Arm, but is slashing his stakes in major assets to raise cash. The Financial Times was the first to report that Softbank's Arm-Nvidia deal had collapsed. The Japanese investment giant would receive a break-up fee of up to $1.25 billion, FT quoted one of the people as saying.

Re:

[jfdavis668]

Won't somebody please think of the children?

Re:Imagine

[black3d]

Not really (ok, not even close, but I'm polite ;)) an accurate analogy, since how many games you own doesn't affect how many games other people can own, nor the price they pay for them.

Re:Imagine

[bloodhawk]

That is one of the worst most illogical analogies I have seen on here and their have been some pretty fucking shitty car ones over the years.

Re:

[slack_justyb]

I swear some people.

How dare the government get in the way!

How dare Google be so big that they don't have to listen to me!

Everyone just collectively dodged a bullet with the shutdown of this purchase. Literally nothing good in terms of competition would have come from nVidia owning ARM.

Chief Executive Masayoshi Son has lauded the potential of Arm, but is slashing his stakes in major assets to raise cash

And this is the tell here. Softbank isn't interested in the licensing any longer, though I would argue that they weren't interested in the first place and saw ARM IP as more of a buy low/sell high thing. I'm sure it's good

Re:

[sg_oneill]

This is gonna make slashdots liibertarians shit blood, but honestly, the ARM IP is so important to everything, frankly the best thing that could happen is for the government to buy it and public domain it. Just set it free.

Preferably the Europeans. No offense to the americans, but I just dont trust the US government not to do something really stupid with it like slam export restrictions all over it and ban the chinese from making them, or something.

Probably for the best

[alvinrod]

Nvidia has managed to piss off just about every other company they've ever worked with in one way or another and I couldn't see them being good for ARM in the long run.

Good

[DrXym]

Nothing positive would have come from allowing a single manufacturer to own & control a company providing designs and services to its direct competition. It doesn't matter what guarantees or concessions they could have given, it was obviously a toxic deal for the entire chip industry.

One question

[jenningsthecat]

When did "IPO" become a verb? Was it too much trouble to type the word "issue" before "IPO" in the title of the summary?

Re:

[MightyMartian]

Welcome to the evolving nature of language and vocabulary. It's been going for probably 200000+ years now

Re:

[jenningsthecat]

Welcome to the evolving nature of language and vocabulary. It's been going for probably 200000+ years now

I'm well aware of linguistic evolution, and I'm bound to say that I consider some of it to be devolution.

Is this my cue to chase you off my lawn? :-)

Re: One question

[Dynedain]

When? Well over 20 years ago in the dotcom era. Probably even earlier.

What's a youngin like you doing on this site?

Re:

[jenningsthecat]

When? Well over 20 years ago in the dotcom era. Probably even earlier.

Guess I just missed it. I've heard and read about a lot of IPO's, but never known the verb form of the acronym.

What's a youngin like you doing on this site?

Flatterer! I joined Slashdot late in life - I'm well on the wrong side of 60.

Re:

[godrik]

News headline have always taken liberties with grammar to make the headline shorter and more impactful.

Sure in the past they were doing it to save characters and boost font size. But the practice remained.

Great news!

[PrancingPony]

This is great news! ARM is much better off as its own separate entity.

What a Deal for Nvidia!

[NotInKansas]

Instead of having to purchase the entire company, Nvidia need only buy controlling interest in the stock at IPO.

Re:

[jerryjnormandin]

If ARM is smart they will retain 51% of the shares! This way they retain control of the company no matter what.

Re:

[NotInKansas]

You forget that it's Softbank that owns ARM, and Softbank started this whole thing because they are looking to divest themselves. I doubt that ARM will have any ability to retain control, it's not their call.

Funny how

[BrookSmith]

Funny how on the same day the (anticipated) announcement that nVidia won't subsume ARM, Intel has announced they are joining RISC-V, maybe Intel are anticipating a licencing price hike for ARM when they IPO.