U.S. chip maker Qualcomm (Qualcomm) and other technology giants filed objections with U.S. antitrust regulators, urging the blocking of a $40 billion deal for chip giant Pfizer (Nvidia) to acquire British chip designer ARM.
ARM is currently held by The Japanese technology giant SoftBank, ARM will license its chip design to more than 500 companies, including Apple Inc.; as 95% of the world’s smartphones use ARM’s architecture, as AMD and Apple and other competitors of ARM licensees, Nvidia’s acquisition of the company will be fair competition has been concerned.
Qualcomm urged global regulators, including the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the European Union, the U.K.’s Competition and Markets Commission (CMA) and China’s State Administration of Market Regulation, not to approve the deal, CNBC 12 reported.
Nvidia previously said the deal would create the world’s “premier computing company in the age of artificial intelligence” and pledged to keep its headquarters in Cambridge, U.K. The FTC’s investigation into the deal has entered its second phase, requesting further information from SoftBank, Pfizer and ARM, sources said, adding that the investigation is expected to continue due to the need to produce a large number of documents. Sources said, due to the need to produce a large number of documents, the investigation is expected to continue for several months.
Qualcomm believes that Nvdia’s successful acquisition of ARM is likely to prevent other chipmakers from using the latter’s technology, giving Nvdia an unfair competitive advantage; in addition to Qualcomm, AI chip startup Graphcore has also raised concerns with the UK Competition and Markets Authority, while on the mainland, huawei has similarly asked for the deal to be blocked.
The American Semiconductor Industry Association also recently sent a letter to President Joe Biden urging him to provide substantial funding for the development of semiconductor manufacturing as part of the U.S. economic recovery and infrastructure building plan, with the chief executives of Intel, Qualcomm, Micron Technology and many other U.S. semiconductor companies signing the letter.
And the European Union is also considering the construction of an advanced semiconductor factory in Europe to avoid over-dependence on the United States and Asia in the core areas of this many important industries, thus showing that countries around the world are aware that the chip is the key to occupy the technological heights in the future.
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