Qualcomm and tech’s other giants are ready to invest in Arm Holdings if regulators block Nvidia‘s bold $40 billion plan to acquire the U.K. chip designer.
The offer came over the weekend from Qualcomm President and CEO-elect Cristiano Amon—but not without strings attached. To a British newspaper, Amon laid out Qualcomm’s objections to the Nvidia deal and promised to invest in Arm if current owner SoftBank takes it public again.
Shares of both tech companies were up: Nvidia (ticker: NVDA) advanced 1.1% to $720.75 and Qualcomm (QCOM) gained 2% to $137.31. The PHLX Semiconductor index, or Sox, rose 1.4%.
Nvidia was bound to face opposition from the industry’s big players since the deal would take Arm from an independent supplier of chip intellectual property to a unit of a fast-growing, multifaceted Silicon Valley player. A big worry is the risk that Arm’s current customers could face if Nvidia cut off their access to Arm’s technology.
Earlier this year, Alphabet (GOOGL),Microsoft(MSFT), and Qualcomm opposed the acquisition and urged regulators to intervene.
“The Arm ecosystem is successful because it’s open,” Amon told The Telegraph on Sunday. He will succeed retiring CEO Steve Mollenkopf at the end of June.
Amon is concerned Nvidia will use Arm to boost its already powerful artificial intelligence chip segment and doesn’t think the deal is necessary because Arm doesn’t need to be saved, The Telegraph reported.
“Arm already won, and won everywhere,” he said, referring to Arm-based chips powering almost every smartphone. “After the battle is won because of its independence, to say, ‘let’s make it better by taking that away’, doesn’t make any sense.”
If the deal falls through because of regulatory issues, Amon told The Telegraph that Qualcomm would be among “a number” of big technology companies interested in investing in Arm if SoftBank takes it public once again.
In May, Nvidia finance chief Colette Kress told Barron’s that she expected the deal to close in early 2022 and was working to educate regulators worldwide about Arm and Nvidia.
“Teams on both side are working quite diligently on this,” Kress said at the time. “Since we’ve gone through this process before with Mellanox, we know each of the cast of characters that we will need at each of these pieces.”