Nvidia’s purchase of ARM is in serious jeopardy following the filing of a blocking lawsuit by the powerful US Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
In September 2020, Nvidia bought ARM for 40,000 million dollars — although both companies seemed to be clear that the agreement was a done thing, the regulators did not think the same. In fact, more than a year has passed since the announcement, and ARM is still not from Nvidia.
Later we have seen how Google, Microsoft, And Qualcomm oppose ARM takeover by Nvidia. Also, the United Kingdom did not see the deal favorably and how the European Union was also going to investigate the agreement. Now it is the FTC of the United States that says that this looks bad and that the agreement would be anti-competitive.
According to FTC, the purchase would give Nvidia the means to control the supply of chips and designs used by its competitors, which would harm competition and curb competition in various technology sectors — among them the cloud, data centers and autonomous cars. ARM is the one that provides the licenses for the processors used by companies such as Apple, Intel, Samsung, Amazon and Huawei.
Nvidia responded to the lawsuit by stating that “we will work to demonstrate that this transaction will benefit the industry and promote competitiveness.”
Since the deal was announced, Nvidia CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang have said that ARM will not move its UK offices. It has also ensured that it will maintain the relationship with the companies that use its licenses.
