Qualcomm has informed regulators around the world — including the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the European Commission, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Authority, and China’s State Administration for Market Regulation — that the company is against Nvidia’s $40 billion acquisition of British chip designer Arm, CNBC reports, citing “sources familiar with the matter.”
The FTC’s investigation has moved to a “second phase” and the U.S. regulator has asked SoftBank, Nvidia and Arm to provide it with more information, according to two sources who are familiar with the deal but wished to remain anonymous due to the private nature of the discussions.
Complying with the information request is likely to take many months as several large documents will need to be produced, the sources said. During the second phase, the FTC will also engage with other companies who may have relevant information that could help it to make a decision, they added.
Nvidia told CNBC it is confident regulators will see the benefits of the acquisition. Arm declined to comment and SoftBank did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.
“You’re looking at a very thorough, a very painful, and a very long investigation,” one of the sources told CNBC… Five industry sources, including two tech investors, have told CNBC they think the deal has a very high chance of being blocked by one or more of the regulators.
MacDailyNews Take: This saga is only just beginning.
Takes one to know one….
What would the world be like if Apple still owned a huge chunk of ARM? Back in the Dark Days Steve slowly sold off Apple’s holdings in ARM (Advanced RISC Machines, back then) in order to use the resulting cash to keep Apple afloat.
Also, go the other way… What if Apple had not been in such dire financial straights back then and actually had the ability to buy ARM completely and made it a wholly owned subsidiary of Apple? We might have seen the switch from PPC to ARM rather than the PPC to Intel move. It would have been truly interesting.
But, that’s all history.
The upside for Apple users is that IF the Nvidia acquisition of Arm goes through we might see Apple start actively supporting high end Nvidia graphics chips and cards. Personally, I give the chance of the Nvidia acquisition of Arm going through as about 60/40 in favor of it going through.
Apple is rolling it’s own GPU, June 2021 should interesting.