Qualcomm Objects To Nvidia's $40 Billion Arm Acquisition

U.S. chipmaker Qualcomm has told regulators around the world that it is against Nvidia's $40 billion acquisition of British chip designer Arm, CNBC reported Friday, citing sources familiar with the matter. From the report: The company has told the Federal Trade Commission, the European Commission, the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority and China's State Administration for Market Regulation that it has concerns about Nvidia buying Arm, which is currently owned by Japanese tech giant SoftBank. The FTC's investigation has moved to a "second phase" and the U.S. regulator has asked SoftBank, Nvidia and Arm to provide it with more information, according to two sources who are familiar with the deal but wished to remain anonymous due to the private nature of the discussions. Complying with the information request is likely to take many months as several large documents will need to be produced, the sources said. During the second phase, the FTC will also engage with other companies who may have relevant information that could help it to make a decision, they added.

Likely to take many months

[Koen Lefever]

The FTC's investigation has moved to a "second phase" and the U.S. regulator has asked SoftBank, Nvidia and Arm to provide it with more information, according to two sources who are familiar with the deal but wished to remain anonymous due to the private nature of the discussions. Complying with the information request is likely to take many months as several large documents will need to be produced, the sources said.

They should just have posted the question to Ask Slashdot, then we could resolve this here and now.

That's rich.

[Gravis Zero]

The Qualcomm has so many patents on cellular communications that you can't make a cell modem without a license without a license from them is now objecting to the business practices of other companies? Nvidia is ethically bankrupt trash but so is Qualcomm. They might as well be objecting on the grounds that it's what they wanted to do but couldn't.

This is so rich that you might as well be talking about Oracle objecting to Microsoft over their business practices.

Re:

[kot-begemot-uk]

It's not just that - they bought Atheros and with that they own a significant share of the MIPS market.

Re:

[chispito]

I don't care if Qualcomm are corporate heroes or corporate villains, I just want to know if this acquisition is a good idea or a bad idea. (More realistically: a tolerable idea or a terrible idea). If they have enough influence to push for even more regulatory scrutiny, then okay.

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[UnknowingFool]

To me it rests on whether NVidia uses ARM to harm their competitors.

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[Guybrush_T]

Not to mention the EU ruling against Qualcomm [theverge.com] for killing the 3G/4G/5G modem market ... to the detriment of NVIDIA. So maybe they are fearing some sort of backlash ?

I doubt NVIDIA will kill the ARM market because it wouldn't make sense, but I can understand Qualcomm being worried about the relationship with NVIDIA given their past story.

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[thegarbz]

Being a patent holder does not make their criticism against yet another megacorpo-consolidation any less valid. Sure, fuck Qualcomm but fuck this merger even more.

And if Oracle started objecting to MS about MS's business practices even at a time when Larry Ellison was discovered to be breeding babies just for food in his evil lair on his island, I'd stand behind him too. And when MS fires back, I'd stand behind them.

I actively support these fuckers criticising each other, especially to regulators.

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[UnknowingFool]

While I have no love for Qualcomm, they have reasonable concerns about the acquisition. It will be only promises from NVidia that ARM licensees are treated fairly in the future. Being owned by SoftBank currently, there is very little conflict of interest as SoftBank wants as many customers as possible. For example, some ARM licensees like Qualcomm and Apple use their own custom GPU cores. Preferential treatment or pressure to use NVidia GPUs even when the customer has no interest could be a problem.

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[raymorris]

A company unrelated to the acquisition has some patents.
What in hell does that have anything whatsoever to do with whether the proposed acquisition is an unlawful restraint of trade?

This is a discussion about whether ARM and NVIDIA combining be would be a violation of public policy. "I hate Qualcomm having patents" isn't a relevant comment here.

There is not one good involved here

[oldgraybeard]

including the government regulators. The one thing that is probably true in circumstances like this! The outcome whatever it is, won't be a public good.

Most ARM licensees are expressing opposition.

[caladine]

This should be entirely unsurprising. A $40 billion price tag for a segment of Softbank that lost $400 M last year according to Softbank's annual report. Nvidia will be under some pressure to start seeing some ROI. Nvidia itself does make a lot of money, so they could deal with a loss from that segment for a while, but no one spends $40 billion to get something that will only cost them further. This either means they cut back on R&D within ARM (at the detriment to the licensees) or they save the best new ARM core changes for themselves or at a significant premium. The only thing that would prevent the latter is vaguely worded assurances.

Regardless of what you think of Qualcomm, their failed attempt to purchase NXP at the hands of Chinese regulators should give people pause. Sure, the Qualcomm-NXP deal was scuttled primarily due to political tensions, but I'm not sure I see them easing enough let them approve a deal like this when it already has posted objections from some of the large tech companies in China (Huawei in particular).