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On reflection I'm a bit surprised that a consortium hasn't emerged to offer more for Arm given the concerns expressed here: - $40bn isn't a lot in aggregate fo

On reflection I'm a bit surprised that a consortium hasn't emerged to offer more for Arm given the concerns expressed here: - $40bn isn't a lot in aggregate for the companies that are heavily invested in the Arm ecosystem (Apple, Qualcomm, Amazon etc) - maybe even Intel would take a small stake! - The $40bn is partly in Nvidia's (arguably) inflated stock. Would cash be more attractive? - Could probably partly fund through a public offering in due course.

ethbr0 6y ago
> The $40bn is partly in Nvidia's (arguably) inflated stock. This is SoftBank we're talking about. Do we really want to bring up inflated stock as one of their concerns? ;)
- klelatti 6y ago
  There is bound to be some sort of financial engineering going on too. Doesn't Son have a stake in Nvidia so maybe this is to help support the Nvidia share price?
  - valuearb 6y ago
    Giving $40B of Nvidia stock to a cash strapped seller hurts the stock price.
    - klelatti 6y ago
      I was wrong on Son having a holding in Nvidia too - seems to have sold it.
- privacy-matters 6y ago
  Yeah, this is a great idea. Apple and Google and Microsoft all have a vested interest in making this happen.
npunt 6y ago
Apple almost certainly has some kind of long term or perpetual contract that assures access to ARM instruction set and perhaps some other IP, given they co-created ARM Holdings back in 1990. While A-series chips use ARM instruction set, they've moved on from using actual ARM cores to their own custom cores with the A6 (2012), so they're probably not that exposed on IP if ARM changes hands. Additionally, since Apple controls the whole stack including dev tools on their platforms, they have a lot more freedom to change underlying chip architecture changes than many others, who must rely entirely on third party software ecosystems to move. Apple probably wouldn't get their money's worth at current price, given they wouldn't want to take on ARM's tech licensing business, since it's well out of scope for Apple's core business. A consortium would only be another messy strategic entanglement to deal with.
- klelatti 6y ago
  Agree on all the individual points but owning a stake in Arm would be a lot less messy than potentially moving to whole new ISA (and possibly losing access to lots of Arm patents for example). I suspect that the calculation is that Nvidia would be a 'good enough' steward of the Arm ISA.
krick 6y ago
> The $40bn is partly in Nvidia's (arguably) inflated stock I'm not seeing this in the article. How much of it is in Nvidia's arguably inflated stock?

ethbr0 6y ago

> The $40bn is partly in Nvidia's (arguably) inflated stock. This is SoftBank we're talking about. Do we really want to bring up inflated stock as one of their concerns? ;)

klelatti 6y ago
There is bound to be some sort of financial engineering going on too. Doesn't Son have a stake in Nvidia so maybe this is to help support the Nvidia share price?
- valuearb 6y ago
  Giving $40B of Nvidia stock to a cash strapped seller hurts the stock price.
  - klelatti 6y ago
    I was wrong on Son having a holding in Nvidia too - seems to have sold it.
privacy-matters 6y ago
Yeah, this is a great idea. Apple and Google and Microsoft all have a vested interest in making this happen.

npunt 6y ago

Apple almost certainly has some kind of long term or perpetual contract that assures access to ARM instruction set and perhaps some other IP, given they co-created ARM Holdings back in 1990. While A-series chips use ARM instruction set, they've moved on from using actual ARM cores to their own custom cores with the A6 (2012), so they're probably not that exposed on IP if ARM changes hands. Additionally, since Apple controls the whole stack including dev tools on their platforms, they have a lot more freedom to change underlying chip architecture changes than many others, who must rely entirely on third party software ecosystems to move. Apple probably wouldn't get their money's worth at current price, given they wouldn't want to take on ARM's tech licensing business, since it's well out of scope for Apple's core business. A consortium would only be another messy strategic entanglement to deal with.

klelatti 6y ago
Agree on all the individual points but owning a stake in Arm would be a lot less messy than potentially moving to whole new ISA (and possibly losing access to lots of Arm patents for example). I suspect that the calculation is that Nvidia would be a 'good enough' steward of the Arm ISA.

krick 6y ago

> The $40bn is partly in Nvidia's (arguably) inflated stock I'm not seeing this in the article. How much of it is in Nvidia's arguably inflated stock?