Nvidia Gave Arm Buy ‘Our Best Shot,’ but Headwinds ‘Too Strong’: CEO

Nvidia “appreciated the regulatory concerns” expressed over its proposed $40 billion Arm buy from SoftBank, said CEO Jensen Huang on an earnings call Wednesday for fiscal Q4 ended Jan. 30. Nvidia and SoftBank agreed last week to terminate the transaction after the FTC sued in December to block the sale, saying it would stifle competing next-generation technologies (see 2202080003). Nvidia for more than a year “worked closely with SoftBank and Arm to explain our vision for Arm and reassure regulators that Nvidia would be a worthy steward of the Arm ecosystem,” said Huang. “We gave it our best shot, but the headwinds were too strong, and we could not give regulators the comfort they needed to approve our deal.” Nvidia’s work in “accelerated computing” and its overall strategy “will continue as before,” he said. The 20-year “architectural” license to Arm's intellectual property that Nvidia gets to keep under the termination clauses of its September 2020 transaction agreement with SoftBank “allows us the full breadth and flexibility of options across technologies and markets,” he said. The stock closed 7.6% lower Thursday at $245.07.