Nvidia to acquire chip designer Arm for $40 billion

SoftBank Group Corp. will sell its chip designer Arm, a vital supplier to Apple Inc., to Nvidia Corp. for as much as $40 billion.

Nvidia will pay SoftBank $12 billion in cash and $21.5 billion in shares.

SoftBank and the Vision Fund, which has a 25 percent stake in Arm, will take a stake in Nvidia of between 6.7 and 8.1 percent.

Brisk business performance could earn SoftBank an additional $5 billion in cash or Nvidia shares and Arm employees $1.5 billion in shares.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son had been praising Arm for its potential but has since been slashing his stakes.

The sale marks an early exit for SoftBank in the British chip technology firm, just four years after its $32 billion acquisition.

The Arm acquisition puts vital suppliers across the industry under the control of Nvidia.

Arm licenses its chip designs and technology the likes of Qualcomm Inc, Apple, and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.

Forthcoming Mac computers are also slated to use chips from Arm.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang intends to retain Arm’s neutral licensing model and license out Nvidia's graphical processor unit through Arm’s silicon partners.

A new artificial intelligence research center will be built at Arm’s Cambridge headquarters.

With the acquisition, Nvidia anticipates more intense competition from data center chip rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Intel Corp.