Nvidia Buys Arm For $40 Billion, Will Create A Super-Computer

Jan 25, 2022 update: It now appears Nvidia may abandon its purchase of Arm amid various regulatory hurdles.

After announcing its next series of graphics cards, Nvidia has made another bombshell announcement. The company is buying the British semiconductor company Arm for $40 billion. Nvidia acquired Arm from SoftBank, which paid $31 billion for it back in 2016.

In a statement, Nvidia said buying Arm will help the company become the "premier computing company for the age of artificial intelligence, accelerating innovation while expanding into large, high-growth markets."

While SoftBank has now sold Arm, the company is making an ownership stake in Nvidia which is expected to be "under 10 percent."

"AI is the most powerful technology force of our time and has launched a new wave of computing," Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang said. "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."

The team at Arm will stay at their current headquarters in Cambridge, but thanks to the new investment, the company will expand on the offices and build a "world-class AI research facility" that will support the development of new technology for health care, life sciences, robotics, and self-driving cars. The company also plans to build a "state-of-the-art AI supercomputer" that uses Arm CPUs.

"Arm and Nvidia share a vision and passion that ubiquitous, energy-efficient computing will help address the world’s most pressing issues from climate change to healthcare, from agriculture to education," Arm CEO Simon Segars said in a statement. "Delivering on this vision requires new approaches to hardware and software and a long-term commitment to research and development. By bringing together the technical strengths of our two companies we can accelerate our progress and create new solutions that will enable a global ecosystem of innovators. My management team and I are excited to be joining Nvidia so we can write this next chapter together."

This is the second major technology deal to be announced late Sunday. The viral app TikTok has partnered with Oracle after the company rejected Microsoft's acquisition offer.