Nvidia could be ready to abandon its Arm acquisition

Nvidia has been putting up a good fight concerning its prospective takeover of Arm, a takeover that was set to be the largest ever semiconductor deal in history. After a ton of backlash—including inquisitions from the UK government, concerns from China, as well as legal action in the US, and a great deal of head-shaking from concerned parties such like Qualcomm, Microsoft, and Intel—sources now suggest the deal could be all but dead in the water. In its place, SoftBank is said to be likely to move toward a public offering as an alternative to the Nvidia acquisition.

The entire proposition has seemed to be on a hiding to nothing from the start. Nvidia was both criticised and outright blocked at almost every turn due to other tech giants worries over losing access to the Arm resources they so heavily rely on. Nvidia retaliated by suggesting that the deal would hardly affect its main competitors, anyway, and even that it would “spur competition” in consoles, rather than hinder it.

And while we discovered not long ago that it was SoftBank, the current owners of Arm, who initially approached Nvidia to discuss the deal, it seems the world isn’t going to approve either way.

Anonymous sources close to the matter spoke to Bloomberg, suggesting that after such a drawn out battle Nvidia may well be ready to back down from the Arm deal. 

“Nvidia has told partners that it doesn’t expect the transaction to close, according to one person,” the article reads. While another soul spoke of SoftBank “stepping up preparations for an Arm initial public offering (IPO) as an alternative to the Nvidia takeover.”

Whether these anonymous sources are correct, and Nvidia is truly losing hope for the merge or not, outwardly both companies are at least still publicly hopeful the deal will go through. The initial agreement expires this year on September 13, 2022; unless Nvidia can get the necessary signoffs by then, the deal’s unlikely to go through. Although it will apparently automatically renew if there is any hope of progress.

Nothing official has been said in terms of the current progress—or lack thereof—regarding the deal from either Softbank or Nvidia, so as far as we know both parties are still pushing ahead. But then it also wouldn’t be a huge surprise if there are factions within both companies that are less than enthusiastic about how the whole process has gone so far.

But these deals don’t move quickly and there may well still be some twists and turns before it’s all over.