40 billion US dollars "selling body" NVIDIA failed, ARM will lay off more than 1,000 people worldwide

According to foreign media reports, a British ARM chip designer recently revealed that it "will plan to cut 12% -15% of its workforce globally - up to 1,000 employees."

Just now, ARM also announced the news in its latest statement: "Like any business, ARM is constantly reviewing its business plans to ensure the company strikes the right balance between opportunity and cost constraints. Unfortunately, this process includes Proposed redundancies for ARM's global workforce".

Most of the losses in the proposed layoffs will be primarily in the U.K. and U.S., the company said, without providing a regional breakdown.

NVIDIA abandons its $40 billion deal to buy Arm

At 7:00 p.m. on September 13 last year, when the US technology giant NVIDIA officially announced that it would spend $40 billion to acquire Arm, it triggered a "shock" in the global technology industry.

Under the agreement, Nvidia will acquire Arm Limited from SBG and the SoftBank Vision Fund (collectively, "SoftBank") for $40 billion.

This case is regarded as "the largest acquisition in the global semiconductor field in history", but it is unanimously "not optimistic" by the outside world.

Since NVIDIA announced its acquisition of ARM, the company has faced various hurdles, starting with the UK government intervening on the grounds of a “national security threat” (ARM is a UK company), and then in December 2021 the US Federal Trade Commission even launched an Legal action to block the deal.

In the end, NVIDIA's $40 billion acquisition of ARM was abandoned.

On February 8 this year, SoftBank officially announced: "NVIDIA and SBG have agreed to terminate the agreement on February 8, 2022, because despite the good faith efforts of both parties, there are still significant regulatory challenges that hinder the completion of the transaction. ."

The New York Times has reported that if the acquisition is successful, ARM employees will share $1.5 billion in acquisition spending and retention bonuses. But now because the deal fell through, SoftBank Smart received $1.25 billion from NVIDIA.

ARM's owner, Japanese conglomerate SoftBank and the U.S. company have formally announced a shutdown last month after regulators on both sides of the Atlantic launched an investigation.

ARM to lay off 1,000 jobs globally for IPO

The "failure" of NVIDIA's $40 billion acquisition of ARM has also led to a series of problems.

According to a TechCrunch report, ARM CEO Simon Segars is leaving the company and will be replaced by Rene Haas, the current president of ARM's Intellectual Property Group (remarkably, Rene Haas is the former VP and GM of NVIDIA's Computing Products business unit) .

Separately, the Financial Times reported yesterday that SoftBank Group has officially announced “plans to conduct an ARM IPO by March 31, 2023.” The IPO is estimated to be worth as much as $80 billion.

The failure of the acquisition plan, coupled with the preparation for listing, has opened the "ARM company announced that it will lay off 12% to 15% of its workforce globally (mainly in the UK and the US) (the maximum number of layoffs will be close to 1,000)" plan. Just now, Hermann Hauser, the co-founder of ARM, has also claimed that he will plan to transfer the headquarters to the United States, or it may cause thousands of Britons to lose their jobs.

As for the secondary listing plan, a spokesman for ARM headquarters revealed that all listing options will be considered, which may lead to a "fierce battle between the London Stock Exchange VS the US Nasdaq Exchange".

write at the end

Although ARM may not be as well-known as chip makers Qualcomm and Intel, ARM's chips almost cover the processor architecture (manufacturing) behind mobile phones around the world, such as Apple (Apple), Samsung (Samsung) and Companies such as Qualcomm license their chip designs and related technologies. Meanwhile, ARM technology is also used in Apple's M1 Mac chip and Amazon's Graviton chip.

In 2016, after SoftBank acquired UK-based ARM for $32 billion, the company began its in-depth research and development in the field of IoT. NVIDIA has said the partnership will enhance its AI and IoT ambitions.

However, we believe that even if NVIDIA does not spend $40 billion to acquire ARM, the two companies can still continue to work closely together.

As NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang emphasized in a statement: "ARM has a bright future and we will continue to support them as a proud licensee for decades." "While we are not a company, we will Working closely with ARM.”