ARM Holdings Have Been Sold To America’s Nvidia
Cambridge: UK-based computer chip designer ARM Holdings is being sold to the American graphics chip specialist Nvidia.
The deal values ARM at $40bn (£31.2bn), four years after it was bought by Japanese conglomerate Softbank for $32bn.
ARM's technology is at the heart of most smartphones, among many other devices.
Nvidia has promised to keep the business based in the UK, to hire more staff, and to retain ARM's brand.
It added that the deal would create "the premier computing company for the age of artificial intelligence" (AI).
"ARM will remain headquartered in Cambridge," said Nvidia's chief executive Jensen Huang.
"We will expand on this great site and build a world-class AI research facility, supporting developments in healthcare, life sciences, robotics, self-driving cars and other fields."
A senior government source told the BBC that there would not be a move to block the sale, but that conditions could be imposed on the takeover.
"So far, when you read the announcement coming from Nvidia they said they will honour that Softbank has made at the time," said Sonja Laud, chief investment officer at Legal & General Investment Management.
"But with the expiry about to happen and obviously the Brexit negotiations under way it will be very interesting to see how this develops in the future."
This appears to address concerns that British jobs would be lost and decision-making shifted to the US. Last week, the Labour Party had urged the government to intervene.
But two of ARM's co-founders have raised other issues about the takeover.
Hermann Hauser and Tudor Brown had suggested ARM should remain "neutral", rather than be owned by a company like Nvidia, which produces its own processors.
The concern is that there would be a conflict of interest since ARM's clients would become dependent on a business with which many also compete for sales.
Moreover, the two co-founders also claimed that once ARM was owned by an American firm, Washington could try to block Chinese companies from using its knowhow as part of a wider trade clash between the countries.
