Nvidia Begins Campaign to Close Arm Acquisition

By Nitin Dahad, EETimes (September 14, 2020)

After several weeks-long rumor mill, Nvidia finally made official its agreement to acquire Arm for $40 billion in stock and cash. Having listened this morning to Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, and Simon Segars, CEO of Arm on the media and analyst call, it was clear that Huang was really fired up by the opportunity, but that the campaign to convince regulators was going to take time – probably at least a year, if not more.

Huang said, “This transaction is very important for the technology sector and the U.K. Together we’re going to create the world’s premier computing company for the age of AI [artificial intelligence].” Throughout the call, Huang was extremely enthusiastic while Segars’ tone was cautiously optimistic – maybe because of a British trait that prevents Brits from being too bullish until the deal actually concludes. There was certainly a stark contrast between the two styles of the American CEO and the British CEO.

The deal is certainly big. As a result SoftBank will become one of the largest investors in Nvidia, because the transaction involves Nvidia selling $21.5 billion of its stock to SoftBank. The remainder of the $40 billion is made up of $12 billion in cash to SoftBank (of which $2 billion is payable on signing), $1.5 billion in equity to Arm employees, and up to $5 billion in cash or stock under an earn-out construct, dependent on Arm meeting specific financial targets.

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