SAN FRANCISCO/SHANGHAI/SEOUL: Nvidia Corp's US$40 billion agreement to acquire Arm Ltd from SoftBank Group Corp is likely to meet strong opposition from Nvidia's chip industry rivals, analysts say, with murmurs of protest emerging in South Korea and China within hours of the deal's announcement.
Geoff Blaber, vice president of research for the Americas with CCS Insights, said the deal"will rightly face huge opposition" from Arm's customers. Nvidia"took great pains to emphasize that Arm will continue to act as a neutral supplier, and it must not interfere with any of Arm's licensing efforts, even if some Arm customers compete with Nvidia," said Linley Gwennap, principal analyst at The Linley Group.