Nvidia’s multibillion-dollar deal to acquire semiconductor giant ARM is officially over. Both the companies confirmed calling off the deal, citing “significant regulatory challenges” as the reason behind the cancellation.
Nvidia’s attempted acquisition of ARM received a lot of heat from industry rivals and government agencies alike. The Federal Trade Commission sued to block the deal from happening, referring to it as an “illegal vertical merger”. ARM is based in the U.K., and the local government there also did not approve of this acquisition. Job security may have been one of its worries — ARM employs over 3,000 people in the U.K. and more than 6,000 in total.
As Nvidia acknowledges in its statement on the failed deal, ARM has a bright future ahead, spanning multiple industries. In the next decade, ARM processors may expand their reach far beyond consumer-level products and move toward A.I., supercomputing, and robotics.