Nvidia is preparing to abandon the acquisition of Arm, still to pay SoftBank $1.25 billion

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Nvidia may not have thought that the acquisition of Arm would be so troublesome, and it is too difficult to pass the scrutiny of regulatory agencies in various countries. In particular, at the end of last year, the US Federal Trade Commission, after reviewing and evaluating, believed that NVIDIA had the means and motivation to “kill the next generation of innovative technology” after acquiring Arm. It has dealt a heavy blow to Nvidia as it hurts competition in the global market in areas such as intelligent driver assistance systems, data processing centers and SmartNICs, and Arm processor-based cloud computing services.

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At the time, the director of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition said in a statement:

“Tomorrow’s technologies depend on preserving today’s competitive, cutting-edge chip markets. This proposed deal would distort Arm’s incentives in chip markets and allow the combined firm to unfairly undermine Nvidia’s rivals.”

According to Wccftech, a source said that Nvidia is quietly preparing to abandon the acquisition of Arm. The reason is simple because the deal has made little progress in getting the relevant regulatory approvals, or the high-profile deal will come to an end. If Nvidia finally decides to abandon the acquisition of Arm, it will have to pay SoftBank $1.25 billion.

In September 2020, Nvidia announced the purchase of Arm from SoftBank for $40 billion in cash and stock, initially planned to be completed within 18 months, in March 2022. However, it was later postponed to September 2022 with questions and objections from all parties and stricter scrutiny by relevant regulators. Arm has previously said it will be forced to consider an IPO if the deal progresses slowly, which has been a back-up for SoftBank and Arm.

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