The FTC has sued to block California-based chip supplier Nvidia Corp.’s $40 billion acquisition of chip design provider Arm Ltd., which is based in the U.K. and owned by Softbank Group Corp. of Tokyo.
“The proposed vertical deal would give one of the largest chip companies control over the computing technology and designs that rival firms rely on to develop their own competing chips,” FTC Bureau of Competition Director Holly Vedova said in a Dec. 2 statement. A merger would also give Nvidia access to sensitive information relating to its competitors, those with Arm licenses, the FTC said.
The suit alleges that the acquisition will harm competition in three global markets where Nvidia competes using Arm-based chips:
• High-level advanced driver assistance systems for passenger cars.
• DPU SmartNICs used to increase security and efficiency of data centers.
• Arm-based CPUs for cloud computing service providers.