After a year of successive struggles, NVIDIA's acquisition of ARM is still yellow...
This afternoon Beijing time, NVIDIA and ARM's parent company SoftBank announced at the same time that it would terminate the previous $66 billion acquisition transaction.
Originally, Tony thought that this acquisition should be stable for such a long time, but he did not expect that there was a moth.
Both sides have already made promotional pages before, and it seems that they have been nailed down.
So why was it that not long ago, NVIDIA, which was full of confidence and was bound to acquire, finally failed to swallow ARM's fat meat sent to its mouth?
This matter, from the beginning to the end of the NVIDIA is a big wrong...
And now before it is China's turn to investigate antitrust, other semiconductor companies and regulators in Europe and the United States are in a hurry...
Bloomberg reported that regulators in the UK, the EU and the US
I am worried that Nvidia will do something out of the ordinary after acquiring ARM
Because once this deal is negotiated, there is no doubt that the situation in the global semiconductor industry will change dramatically.
Apple, AMD, Qualcomm, Intel or Samsung, as long as it is used to get arm architecture, they all have to look at NVIDIA's face to live.
For example, if Apple's M1 chip can't use the ARM architecture, the new Macbook may not be able to achieve such a big increase in standby power consumption.
If Qualcomm, Samsung, and MediaTek can't use ARM, then Android phones around the world will be in a dilemma of no goods to sell.
ARM is like a Pandora's box, attracting all manufacturers to open it, but in the end only the bold Nvidia put its hand on the lock.
These companies that have been soaking in capital for a long time, and with their eyes closed, know what NVIDIA wants to do, it must be the pressure to exert pressure, the opposition to oppose.
The joint statement of Nvidia and SoftBank also said,
The main reason for the obstruction of acquisitions is the significant regulatory challenges ▼
But no, the current ending of ARM and Nvidia, eight achievements are the result of the joint efforts of regulators and friends in various countries, and the excitement is comparable to the family ethics drama of the local satellite TV at 8 o'clock in the evening.
。。。 The rich maid (ARM) hid the identity of the bastard daughter of the old man for more than ten years, and wanted to marry Xiao Kai (NVIDIA), who had a successful career, but was opposed by the whole family.
After a year of twisting, the mandarin duck could not resist the powerful family power, and finally regretted it for life...
Cough, pull away...
But then again, ARM, this company, is really born to be a.
The first joint venture chip company by Apple, Nokia, Acorn, VLSI, Technology and other companies, headquartered in Cambridge, Uk., has complete intellectual property rights for ARM chips.
In the early years, ARM was just a chip supplier attached to the technology giants, and it usually produced chips in its own way, and it was always possible to get a piece of the pie.
However, because the revenue from the production of chips is not high, ARM drew a salary and planned to gamble, and in the late 90s, they changed the company's business model to the design of the chip.
Simply put, it is only designed chip architecture, and no longer provide production services.
Unexpectedly, the operation mode of making wedding dresses for others just bumped into the arrival of the mobile phone era.
Because of the uniqueness of its architecture, almost all the chips of mobile communication manufacturers are inseparable from the use of ARM to develop, and over time, ARM has naturally become an indispensable part of the chip supply chain.
In the past two years, arm chips compared to X86, has a lighter, lower standby power consumption characteristics, in addition to mobile phones, such as car machines, notebooks and other mobile devices, all turned to arm architecture.
This means that almost all mobile digital devices in the future are inseparable from ARM's intellectual property rights and chip architecture.
Savvy semiconductor manufacturers are also aware that the importance of ARM is different from the past, and if you want to grasp the future of the chip industry, you must use your brain on ARM.
So Nvidia took the first shot.
Of course, to do business or you have to love me, NVIDIA is interested, ARM has any feelings?
ARM may not have, but it may be...
Just at this time, ARM's parent company, SoftBank, has not eased up from the losses invested in Uber and Wework in the past two years, and is eager to return a wave of blood.
Wework didn't end up with the "V-word recovery" that SoftBank's CEO had hoped
At that time, the goods that can be sold at a good price are naturally arms that everyone is eyeing...
SoftBank wants to sell for a high price, NVIDIA Lao Huang wants to "blackmail the son of heaven to order the princes", and the two sides hit it off and prepared to do things.
However, as mentioned at the beginning, behind the large-scale acquisition case, it is bound to lead to anti-monopoly review by the supervision agencies and the opposition and protests of friendly businessmen, and the matter can only be resolved in the end.
Such opposition and protest is even global.
Needless to say, no country is willing to relocate its own technology companies, or the semiconductor industry, which has key technologies in its hands, is still like ARM's hands.
Recently, because of the shortage of chips in Europe, the European Union wants to pass the "Chip Act" to rely on itself and establish a chip production line that opens up the upstream and downstream to alleviate its dependence on imported chip manufacturing.
The ARM architecture, as a key part of chip manufacturing, became an American company, which is not what they want to see.
As for the United States, whether it is Apple, Microsoft, Qualcomm or AMD, it is certainly not willing to see NVIDIA alone.
Tony speculated that behind this, they must have said a lot of "good things" for NVIDIA.
In fact, this is not the first time that such a similar thing has happened.
In 2018, semiconductor giant Broadcom tried to buy Qualcomm for $117 billion, but was cut off by the U.S. government;
In the same year, Qualcomm also wanted to buy NXP Semiconductors for $44 billion, but it also failed because China's Ministry of Commerce did not nod.
Interestingly, although the ARM and Nvidia deal could not be concluded, according to the acquisition agreement between the two parties, the previous $1.25 billion acquisition deposit that Nvidia had previously advanced to SoftBank would not be refunded.
This money will automatically be converted to NVIDIA's licensing fees for the next 20 years using the ARM architecture.
In other words, this amount is about equal to a Activision Blizzard deal, not only did it fail, but the old owner SoftBank also made NVIDIA $1.25 billion.
The next step for SoftBank is to plan to cash out arm listing.
In this way, the previous family ethics drama seems to have become a rich old yellow honest man after being green by a scumbag/ woman, or gave a considerable breakup fee of the dog blood love story...
Tony can't see who won the game, but ARM is still the most important chip on the table now.
ARM's own business model is destined to be a "tool company" with low revenue.
At present, the great love of the big manufacturers for ARM is that everyone regards it as an important piece of the puzzle for the ecology of their own business empire.
When it is replaced by new technologies and new architectures, the object of capital's pursuit of profit will be different.
There is a use value, perhaps it is the most effective way to survive in this cruel capital world...
Author: Jihao Editor: Polygon Line
Images, sources:
Bloomberg：SoftBank Plans to Take Arm Public After Nvidia Abandons Deal
WSJ：Nvidia, SoftBank Call Off Blockbuster Arm Deal
NVIDIA：NVIDIA and SoftBank Group Announce Termination of NVIDIA’s Acquisition of Arm Limited
Weibo: @Europe Times
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