Nvidia Corp. is giving up on its attempt to acquire Arm Ltd. from Softbank Group Corp., which said Tuesday that it will instead take the spurned chip designer public.
In a statement. Softbank 9984, -0.90% said the two sides agreed to terminate the deal owing to those “regulatory challenges.” An initial public offering of Arm will take place within the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023, Softbank said in a statement. The Financial Times had reported Monday that the deal would be called off.
Arm licenses its semiconductor designs to companies, where they are mostly used in low-power-consuming devices such as smartphones, tablets and wearables. Arm licensees are also among Nvidia’s competitors in the semiconductor sector, including Intel Corp. INTC, +0.44%, Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD, +1.29% and Qualcomm Inc. QCOM, +1.69%. Nvidia promised that Arm would continue working with other chip companies, but the competitive aspect seemed to set off alarm bells for regulators worldwide.
Nvidia’s stock was largely stable in the extended session after the report hit, gaining 0.5%. Shares took a hit late last year, after the U.S. Federal Trade Commission sued to stop the deal, and have slipped farther early in 2022 along with other heated tech stocks. Nvidia is still worth more than $600 billion, though, and Rasgon doesn’t see the dissolution of the Arm deal potentially causing a huge rerating by Wall Street.
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