Arm CEO says Nvidia merger better than going public

[July 03, 2021]  By Stephen Nellis

(Reuters) - Nvidia Corp's proposed $40 billion acquisition of Arm Ltd would better support the creation of UK technology jobs than the SoftBank Group Corp unit becoming a standalone public company once again, Arm's chief executive said on Friday.

"We contemplated an IPO but determined that the pressure to deliver short-term revenue growth and profitability would suffocate our ability to invest, expand, move fast and innovate," Arm CEO Simon Segars wrote in a blog post https://www.arm.com/blogs/blueprint/arm-nvidia.

"Combining with Nvidia will give us the scale, resources and agility needed to maximize the opportunities ahead," Segars wrote.

Last week, Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told The Telegraph newspaper  and other media outlets that Qualcomm was open to investing in an initial public offering by Arm if the Nvidia deal falls apart. Amon has told media outlets that joint ownership of Arm by industry peers would keep the firm independent.

Qualcomm did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Nvidia last year announced its plan to acquire Cambridge, England-based Arm, long a neutral supplier of chip design technology, from the Japanese conglomerate, which does not own any other chip companies.

The logo of Nvidia Corporation is seen during the annual Computex computer exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan May 30, 2017. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo

Critics like Qualcomm Inc have argued that allowing Arm to be owned by one chip company could cause it to focus on technologies that benefit its owner rather than the broader industry.

The deal is under regulatory scrutiny in the United States, United Kingdom and European Union.

SoftBank bought Arm for $32 billion in 2016, betting on a surge in what are called internet-of-things (IoT) chips. Arm invested heavily in hiring to purse the technology. But the IoT market failed to produce a revenue boom for Arm, and the company later raised prices  for some of its technologies, angering some customers.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Richard Chang)

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