After NVIDIA’s failed purchase of ARM, major players in the semiconductor industry are keeping an eye on the future of the British chip design firm.
Now Softbank has prepared the stock market launch of ARM for 2023, and Qualcomm is the first company to come forward showing interest in buying ARM — but not in the way you think.
Cristiano Amon, president and CEO of Qualcomm, told the Financial Times that he would like to buy ARM. He emphasized that “many companies would have to get involved” in order to preserve ARM’s independence.
Qualcomm welcomes joining forces with other chip manufacturers — that is, its rivals — and forming a consortium to acquire ARM and for each member to obtain a portion of the company. Thus, he assures that the neutrality of the company that today remains based in the United Kingdom but that belongs to the Japanese SoftBank would be maintained.
According to Cristiano Amon, one idea is for licensees or partners to join forces to buy at least a portion of ARM from Softbank. In addition to Qualcomm, these include Ampere, Apple, AWS, Huawei, Marvell, Mediatek, Microchip, Micron, Nvidia, NXP, Phison, Rockchip, Samsung, SK Hynix, Texas Instruments, Toshiba and Western Digital. It is not known whether and which of these companies are interested in such an approach.
