NVIDIA’s $40 billion acquisition of Arm, announced on September 13, 2020, ended in failure due to significant regulatory challenges, and NVIDIA and SoftBank Group, the owner of Arm, announced the termination of the acquisition deal on February 14 of this year. Although Nvidia has terminated the acquisition, in the global chip field influence Arm, is still the target of many companies to acquire or invest, Intel CEO Pat Kissinger has previously said in an interview, if a consortium appears, they may be very willing to participate in some way.
Foreign media said in the report, in addition to being interested in participating in Intel, Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, Qualcomm and other manufacturers, is also considered the most likely to acquire Arm companies.
However, a Korean media report said that the attractiveness of Arm as a target for acquisition is decreasing, and industry insiders believe that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, two companies, are unlikely to be acquired.
For Samsung Electronics, industry insiders believe that they are vigorously developing their foundry business, fabless manufacturers are their main customers, foundry these customers designed chips, the acquisition of Arm is not as useful as they think. There are also industry insiders who said that the world’s fabless manufacturers rely on Arm’s intellectual property to design chips, if Samsung Electronics will Arm acquisition, they may be out of fear of leakage of trade secrets and terminate cooperation with Samsung Electronics.
Antitrust regulatory challenges, but also the industry believes that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix is unlikely to acquire Arm, Nvidia is also the reason for the abandonment of the acquisition. Foreign media also mentioned in the report, the British side of the current cross-border acquisition of Arm is still regarded as a technology leak, etc.
Although the acquisition is not possible, the foreign media mentioned in the report, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix to acquire Arm, but also has a rational aspect of consideration. They believe that Arm’s business scope can directly compensate for the weakness of the Korean semiconductor industry, in South Korea, semiconductor manufacturing than design, packaging, etc. is much more developed.
