NVIDIA is seeing its acquisition of Arm impeded in multiple ways, with the gigantic acquisition that is worth up to $54 billion hitting speedbumps with the FTC and now the EU.
The European Commission will raise their concerns from regulators soon, with NVIDIA saying it is ready to answer "any concerns" the board may have about its acquisition of Arm. NVIDIA is expected to notify the commission in early September of its plans to acquire Arm -- at this time, the EU regulators will look into the inner movements of the $54 billion deal.
There are the obvious concerns that a US company is buying a major UK company, with the UK government concerned of the deal over what they're calling national security, and the fact that NVIDIA will gain access to Arm and its vast IP... and block it from being used on their competitors' products. Arm chips are used in many more technology products than people know, and you'd be giving those keys to NVIDIA.
Even back in 2020, Arm co-founder Hermann Hauser said: "Surrendering the UK's most powerful trade weapon to the US is making Britain a US vassal state". Arm customers MediaTek, BroadCom, and Marvell have given NVIDIA -- who are also NVIDIA customers, backing for the huge deal.
An NVIDIA spokesperson said: "This transaction will be beneficial to Arm, its licensees, competition, and the industry. We are working through the regulatory process and we look forward to engaging with the European Commission to address any concerns they may have".
An EU commission spokesperson said: "We have no specific comment. This transaction has not been formally notified to the commission. If a transaction has an EU dimension, it is always up to the companies to notify it to the commission".
But then you've got the other side of the coin...
AMD has its chips made by TSMC, located in Taiwan -- where China has been very aggressive in its stance about taking control of the island to secure TSMC. NVIDIA has its GPUs made by Samsung in South Korea, as well as TSMC in Taiwan.
If there is any future conflict in the Asia-Pacific region, it'll be with Taiwan at its center -- for obvious reasons: TSMC. NVIDIA making an acquisition like it is with Arm makes sense, and the UK and US should be working together -- not against each other, on this.
NVIDIA acquiring Arm is better than Huawei acquiring Arm, right? As for the dire warnings, I've got some of those links below: