Computer graphics chip company Nvidia said it plans to buy Britain’s Arm Holdings for $40 billion, in a merger of two leading chipmakers.
Santa Clara, California-based Nvidia and Arm’s parent company, Japanese technology giant SoftBank, announced the deal Sunday.
Nvidia is best known for its graphics processing chips, while Arm is renowned as an innovator in the “Internet of Things” — its technology is used in the vast majority of smartphones, for example. Arm centers its business on intellectual property, especially in mobile computing, rather than chip manufacturing, for which it relies on partners.
“AI is the most powerful technology force of our time and has launched a new wave of computing,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, in a statement. “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.
“Simon Segars and his team at Arm have built an extraordinary company that is contributing to nearly every technology market in the world. Uniting NVIDIA’s AI computing capabilities with the vast ecosystem of Arm’s CPU, we can advance computing from the cloud, smartphones, PCs, self-driving cars and robotics, to edge IoT, and expand AI computing to every corner of the globe.
“This combination has tremendous benefits for both companies, our customers, and the industry. For Arm’s ecosystem, the combination will turbocharge Arm’s R&D capacity and expand its IP portfolio with NVIDIA’s world-leading GPU and AI technology.
SoftBank bought Arm for about $32 billion in 2016 in a move aimed at the Japanese company’s ambitions in advancing how various devices, including security cameras and household appliances, connect online and work together.
