Nvidia’s takeover purchase of Arm for roughly A$56 billion in cash and stock has been nixed, as regulator headaches make the deal impossible.
The two companies officially called off what would have been the biggest chip deal in history, “because of significant regulatory challenges preventing the consummation of the transaction, despite good faith efforts by the parties.”
The FTC announced in December its intention to sue to block the deal, with the European Union also moving to oppose it.
Softbank, who own Arm, will keep a $1.25 billion prepayment, and will divest of Arm with an IPO, to take place before March 31, 2023.
Arm CEO Sion Segars will no longer run the company, resigning after the failed deal. Rene Haas, president of Arm’s IP group will take his place.
“Arm has a bright future, and we’ll continue to support them as a proud licensee for decades to come,” said Jensen Huang CEO of Nvidia.
“Arm is at the center of the important dynamics in computing. Though we won’t be one company, we will partner closely with Arm. The significant investments that Masa [CEO of Softbank] has made have positioned Arm to expand the reach of the Arm CPU beyond client computing to supercomputing, cloud, AI and robotics.
“I expect Arm to be the most important CPU architecture of the next decade.”
