Nvidia Corp’s proposed $40 billion acquisition of Arm Ltd would better support the creation of UK technology jobs than the SoftBank Group unit becoming a standalone public company once again, Arm’s CEO has said.
“We contemplated an IPO but determined that the pressure to deliver short-term revenue growth and profitability would suffocate our ability to invest, expand, move fast and innovate,” Arm CEO Simon Segars wrote in a blog post.
“Combining with Nvidia will give us the scale, resources and agility needed to maximize the opportunities ahead,” Segars wrote.
Last week, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told The Telegraph newspaper and other media outlets that Qualcomm was open to investing in an initial public offering by Arm if the Nvidia deal falls apart. Amon has told media outlets that joint ownership of Arm by industry peers would keep the firm independent.
Qualcomm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nvidia last year announced its plan to acquire Cambridge, UK-based Arm, long a neutral supplier of chip design technology, from the Japanese conglomerate, which does not own any other chip companies.
Critics like Qualcomm have argued that allowing Arm to be owned by one chip company could cause it to focus on technologies that benefit its owner rather than the broader industry.
The deal is under regulatory scrutiny in the United States, UK and wannabe nation state, the European Union.
SoftBank bought Arm for $32 billion in 2016, betting on a surge in what are called internet-of-things (IoT) chips. Arm invested heavily in hiring to purse the technology. But the IoT market failed to produce a revenue boom for Arm, and the company later raised prices for some of its technologies, angering some customers.
The team at Platform Executive hope you have enjoyed the ‘[post_title]’ article. Automatic translation from English to a growing list of languages via Google AI Cloud Translation. Initial reporting via our official content partners at Thomson Reuters. Reporting by Jonathan Landay. Editing by Steve Orlofsky.
You can stay on top of all the latest developments across the platform economy, find solutions to your key challenges and gain access to our problem-solving toolkit and proprietary databases by becoming a member of our growing community. Platform Executive has two membership tiers, Community (FREE) and Premium ($195 per year), which offer different levels of access to our products and services. What are you waiting for?
