NVIDIA has officially sealed the deal with SoftBank Group Corp in acquiring the semiconductor and chip design company Arm for a whopping $40 billion.

4 years ago, SoftBank bought it for $31 billion, and 4 years later it was let go at $9 billion more. While it is widely known that SoftBank is putting Arm for sale in hopes of recovering from previous failed ventures, NVIDIA’s commitment to enter the computing market dominated by Intel and AMD shows that they are ready to push their ambition to realize the age of AI by themselves. To be clear, SoftBank still has ownership stakes within Arm, albeit less than 10%.

Here is a list of transaction numbers made public for the acquisition.

  • Shares: 44.3 million at $21.5 billion
  • Cash: $2 billion payable at signing for a total of $12 billion
  • Additional payouts: Up to $5 billion in cash / common stocks, subject to Arm’s financial performance target
  • $1.5 billion to Arm employees

The full transaction is expected to be completed in approximately 18 months.

With the acquisition of Arm this year and Mellanox last year, it seems that NVIDIA is really trying to be ahead of everyone else for a total ecosystem comprised of its own offerings in terms of CPU, GPU, and networking resources. For now, Arm will remain headquartered in Cambridge and continue their development in fields such as healthcare, life sciences, robotics, self-driving cars, and more powered by an upcoming state-of-the-art AI supercomputer based on their own CPUs to accelerate their R&D phases even faster.

“AI is the most powerful technology force of our time and has launched a new wave of computing.In the years ahead, trillions of computers running AI will create a new internet-of-things that is thousands of times larger than today’s internet-of-people. Our combination will create a company fabulously positioned for the age of AI.

Jensen Huang, CEO & founder, NVIDIA

For the previous clients of Arm, it is expected that no immediate changes are to be reflected as it will continue to its open-licensing model while partners will also benefit from current and future innovative solutions from NVIDIA. The company will retain its name and identity while the intellectual property will remain registered in the U.K.

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