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Softbank to sell 25% stake in ARM Holdings to Saudi-backed investment group
- grabcocque 10y agoI think the headline is misleading at best. It's transferring 25% of its stake into fund into which it has joint ownership. The headline makes it sound like its dumping its investment. The mods changed the BBC's clickbait to something more accurate. Thanks mods!
- mtgx 10y agoI, for one, much prefer TheRegister's headline: > Softbank tears off chunk of ARM, feeds it to hungry Saudis https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/08/quarter_arm_sold_saudi_investment_fund_reports/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/08/quarter_arm_sold_sa...
- distantsounds 10y agoEl Reg's headlines are the best. Full of snark and wit.
- ganfortran 10y agoGraphic
- bargl 10y agoSoftbank also just started a merger of Intelsat and OneWeb. https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/28/oneweb-is-merging-with-intelsat-softbank-to-invest-another-1-7b-in-new-satellite-co/ https://techcrunch.com/2017/02/28/oneweb-is-merging-with-int...
- petra 10y agoSo, does the availability of almost infinite oil money(i know, maybe not a realistic assumption, just an hypothesis) change the chances of ARM overtaking Intel in servers or PC's ?
- roymurdock 10y agoLegacy device markets are pretty firmly entrenched on both sides. Intel with server/PC MCUs, ARM with any silicon at the SoC/MPU level and below for smartphones, embedded systems, etc. (also gaining share from migration away from MIPS and Power architectures). Throwing money at these mkts probably won't help much, and many are low growth anyways. The interesting, high-growth spaces where ARM and Intel are currently battling for hardware mkt share are the IoT Gateways market and the autonomous vehicle SoC market. The supporting software ecosystem will also become increasingly important over the next few years - this is a spot where ARM could really outpace Intel if it receives a big infusion of resources (see ARM mbed cloud/OS).
- arcanus 10y agoHigh performance computing is also a competitive space. While it has historically been dominated by x86, next generation architectures, such as ARM or GPUs are expected to be necessary as the systems grow in size.
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- ju-st 10y agoWith AMD presenting a formidable product ARM's long-term outlook of becoming the runner-up in the server market has worsened considerably. The hype surrounding low power ARM-SoCs has already fizzled since several years because of their bad performance per watt. So I'd say ARM won't overtake anyone in servers or PC's in the near future.
- cobookman 10y agothe RISC vs CISC battle was won by CISC decades ago. RISC is better in low compute power. CISC is better for high compute areas.
- awinter-py 10y agoThe saudis are desperate to use their sovereign wealth fund to diversify (i.e. save) their economy. The country has a lot of problems but I'm legitimately excited to see what they come up with. The first step to getting out of a hole is to recognize you're in one, and they have. With any luck, economics-driven policy will lead to social change as well.
- tyingq 10y agoThey have $3.5B of it tied up with Uber at the moment. Not sure how prudent that was, and I don't mean the recent controversy. Just seems like a big bet on something that depends on future investments of the same magnitude to keep afloat until self-driving cars are really a thing. Edit: Disagree? Please reply. This isn't a general Uber bash. It's known that they run at a very large quarterly losses (-$800M reported for Q3/16). Making a huge investment does come with the downside that you're the go-to when funds are running low. You have to keep buying in, or hope someone else does. If the idea is to diversify away from risk, it seems an odd choice. I'm open to learning why it was a good idea.
- harryh 10y agoThe idea is to diversify away from oil, not to diversify away from risk.
- tyingq 10y agoWell, I assumed diversify away from "high risk", given that oil is pretty "high risk" over the long term for them.
- elastic_church 10y agoNot as big of a deal as you imagine. Diversifying now is the optimal scenario. Booms busts they'll be ok
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- technological 10y agoThats nice. For anyone wondering the Saudi-backed investment group is called "Mubadala". Mubadala owns 100% of GlobalFoundries ( which brought the hardware division from IBM)
- axyjo 10y agoMubadala is Emirati, not Saudi. From the article, it seems that just the Vision Fund run by Mubadala has the backing of the Saudis
- JumpCrisscross 10y agoMubadala is Abu Dhabi's sovereign development company; its "mandate is to facilitate the diversification of Abu Dhabi’s economy" [1]. The SoftBank Vision Fund is "managed in the United Kingdom by a subsidiary of" SoftBank Group Corp [2]. Saudi Arabia's "Public Investment Fund was established in 1971 to provide financing support for projects of strategic significance to the national economy" [2]. It is the Saudi analog to Abu Dhabi's Mubadala. PIF is an LP in the SoftBank Vision Fund, albeit a significant and likely influential one. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mubadala_Development_Company https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mubadala_Development_Company [2] http://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/news/press/sb/2016/20161014_01/ http://www.softbank.jp/en/corp/news/press/sb/2016/20161014_0...
- darkhorn 10y agoSaudis own stakes of Turkish Telekom. And guess what telekom company is worse in Turkey. Saudis only milk. No research or development.
- kbumsik 10y agoI was always wondering why Softbank bought ARM. ARM is of course market leading processor design company but it is almost solely fabless and intellectual property company. I don't see how ARM would benefit Softbank.