Graphic chip giant maker Nvidia’s bid to buy Arm from one of the world’s biggest chip designers has failed. The U.S. graphics chip giant had announced in September 2020 that it was planning to buy Arm for $40 billion from SoftBank. It would have been the chip industry’s biggest deal ever had it happened. (https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/08/nvidia-arm-deal-may-have-been-doomed-from-the-start.html)

The semiconductor giants issued a joint statement Tuesday saying the deal has been scrapped due to “significant regulatory challenges.”

Some had predicted that the deal was doomed from the time the talks began between the two. Is that the case?

UK-based Arm is one of the world’s most crucial semiconductor businesses with clients like Apple, AMD, and Qualcomm, depend on it for their needs were sceptical about a big monopoly being formed. But these were in hushed voices. The main concern was that Nvidia could stop some of the companies that are dependent on Arm’s designs from using them. Nvidia went out of its way to clarify that it would allow Arm to continue its existing clients and also promised that it would invest in Arm to strengthen it, but not many believed it. (https://www.wsj.com/articles/nvidia-softbank-call-off-blockbuster-arm-deal-11644297283)

It was left to the regulators to make noises. The Federal Trade Commission was the first to say that it wanted the deal to fail as it could give Nvidia overwhelming control over chips. The FTC was not the only one to raise doubts about the deal. Britain’s antitrust regulator had even raised national-security concerns.

With the world facing a chip shortage, many countries and regulators are very cautious, and the deal may have fallen through because of a convergence of reasons.

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The biggest chip deal in history has fallen apart:
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/08/tech/nvidia-arm-deal-softbank-intl-hnk/index.html