The deal raised questions on whether or not Nvidia would profit from Arm’s technology
After it had announced in September 2020 its plans to
acquire the chipmaker Arm from SoftBank for $40 billion, the purchase rose concerns
to regulators.
According to reports from CNBC and Bloomberg, Google,
Microsoft, and Qualcomm
appealed to regulators in the UK, EU, US, and China on Nvidia’s influence on
how Arm licenses out its chipmaking technology.
Nvidia
CEO, Jensen Huang wrote to the Financial Times that he could “unequivocally
state that Nvidia will maintain Arm’s open licensing model. We have no
intention to ‘throttle’ or ‘deny’ Arm’s supply to any customer.”
However, Nvidia’s competitors argue that “keeping Arm
neutral and not using its tech to Nvidia’s own gains isn’t what the company
would be incentivized to do — especially not after paying $40 billion for it.”
If restrictions on licenses are to be imposed, companies who work with Arm’s
technology would be hurt.
Now, regulators are allegedly looking into the matter, to
see if Arm’s purchase would make Nvidia too powerful in the chipmaking
business. At the same time, EU and UK officials promised to “thoroughly
investigate.”
Following the news, Google stock price added
0.39%, Qualcomm went up 1.66%, and Microsoft closed 0.20%
higher. On the other hand, Nvidia lost 1.90%.
Sources: theverge.com, finance.yahoo.com
