Skip to main content

Nvidia reportedly close to sealing more than $40 billion deal to buy ARM

Nvidia is reportedly finalizing the acquisition of chip designer ARM from SoftBank, in a deal said to be worth more than $40 billion.

The deal, reported by the Wall Street Journal and Reuters, citing sources familiar with the matter, will create a giant in the chip industry.

Get your weekly teardown of the tech behind PC gaming
Check your inbox!

Nvidia has previously collaborated with ARM, which licenses out technology to chip makers. ARM’s technology is found in mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, but has also expanded its reach to vehicles, data centers, and others.

ARM will be valued at the low end at $40 billion in the cash-and-stock deal under discussion, according to sources. If the purchase pushes through, it will be a win for SoftBank, which acquired ARM for $32 billion in 2016 but has “struggled to jump-start growth in the business,” according to the Wall Street Journal.

Nvidia and ARM have reportedly been in exclusive talks for several weeks. The deal may be finalized as soon as early next week, if there are no last-minute issues.

The acquisition of ARM, if it pushes through, will be a game-changer for Nvidia, as it may give the company far bigger reach than rivals Intel and AMD.

Digital Trends reached out to Nvidia regarding the reported deal to acquire ARM, but the company declined to comment.

Nvidia unveils RTX 3000 series

Nvidia recently unveiled the RTX 3090, RTX 3080, and RTX 3070, with the $1,499 RTX 3090 able to play games at 8K in 60 fps.

The new graphics cards debut Nvidia’s new Ampere microarchitecture, which increases GPU performance by 50% while reducing power consumption by half.

Aaron Mamiit
Aaron received a NES and a copy of Super Mario Bros. for Christmas when he was 4 years old, and he has been fascinated with…
A dangerous new jailbreak for AI chatbots was just discovered
the side of a Microsoft building

Microsoft has released more details about a troubling new generative AI jailbreak technique it has discovered, called "Skeleton Key." Using this prompt injection method, malicious users can effectively bypass a chatbot's safety guardrails, the security features that keeps ChatGPT from going full Taye.

Skeleton Key is an example of a prompt injection or prompt engineering attack. It's a multi-turn strategy designed to essentially convince an AI model to ignore its ingrained safety guardrails, "[causing] the system to violate its operators’ policies, make decisions unduly influenced by a user, or execute malicious instructions," Mark Russinovich, CTO of Microsoft Azure, wrote in the announcement.

Read more