Proposed Arm Buyout: Huang on So Many Levels

By Mike Feibus, FeibusTech
EETimes (February 18, 2021)

Here’s why so many tech companies believe Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s proposed acquisition of Arm, a critical ingredient in everything from smartphones and cars to industrial robotics and the cloud, is bad for business.

Late Friday last week, news broke that three big tech companies reportedly came out against Nvidia’s proposed $40 billion buyout of ARM, one of the biggest and most consequential tech deals ever, with broad implications from the cloud to the edge.

Note the word “reportedly.”

It’s been five months since Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gushed about the potential for pairing Nvidia’s AI capabilities with Arm’s pervasive compute platform. And though the ecosystem broadly maligns this deal, not a single Big Tech exec has spoken out publicly against it.

At first blush, that may seem surprising. Because the doomsday scenarios industry insiders privately spin are as damaging to competition, pricing and innovation as they are far-reaching, with the potential to make vital electronic cogs more costly and less secure.

But more than anything, the execs I’ve spoken with over the past few months — the conversations have all been off the record or on background — say the outcome they fear most is that they might set themselves up for retribution by Nvidia if they object to the acquisition, and the deal is consummated anyway.

Regardless of whether there’s merit to the concerns, they do underscore the undue influence and power Nvidia would garner with this acquisition.

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