Nvidia + Arm makes a tough pill to swallow: Lee

On December 2nd, 2021, the FTC announced that it would move to block Nvidia’s acquisition of Arm Holding. This most recent complaint has become another link in a global chain of regulatory legal challenges and reviews that could sink Nvidia’s $40 billion bid first announced on Sept. 13,  2020.

The deal was bound to be a tough one to close from the outset as marquee Arm licensees such as Qualcomm, Alphabet, and Microsoft protested the union. However, Nvidia did manage to muster public support from Mediatek, Marvell, and Broadcom support for the transaction shortly after.

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Lee: Is Nvidia Grace a sign of doubt?

Nvidia’s entry into the data center CPU game has been widely celebrated as a landmark move that poses an existential threat to Intel’s dominance in the data center. Accordingly, Nvidia’s stock jumped 5.62 percent upon the announcement while Intel’s dropped 4.18 percent. However, the advent of Project Grace feels like something else. It could suggest that Nvidia sees the writing on the wall and needs a hedge in the event that Nvidia’s $40 billion acquisition of Arm falls through.

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Industry Insight: Nvidia + Arm – An Industry Positive or Negative?

Shortly after Softbank announced that it was looking to spinoff or sell Arm, which they acquired in 2016 for $32 billion, the rumor mill went into full speed. Speculation ran the gamut from Intel to Apple as potential buyers. Who would court Arm? Rumors settled on Nvidia, the GPU company. Would a Nvidia + Arm union make sense? After all, Nvidia has done well and created a disruptive narrative within the semiconductor industry with its GPU-centered plot line which branches off into numerous subplots in telco networking, edge computing and various AI application domains such as autonomous vehicles, intelligent systems and smart manufacturing.

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