NVIDIA’s latest venture of taking over British design house Arm Ltd. is currently facing lots of opposition from a host of American companies. This is the latest obstacle in the deal which is already facing severe setbacks due to the interference from regulators worldwide.
According to the latest reports, California-based electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla Inc, digital retail giant Amazon and Samsung Electronics have shared their reservations with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) about the proposed acquisition of Arm by NVIDIA.
This latest opposition comes as the FTC is expected to release the detailed results of its investigation, which started earlier this year, in the coming weeks. And according to rumours, NVIDIA will be getting a clean slate for its deal. However, things are not going easy for the manufacturer of the graphics.
The thing about Arm is that its technology ecosystem makes it an attractive target for NVIDIA however the deal is a bull’s eye for criticism from companies belonging to all industry sectors. The first opposition was made by Qualcomm and later on it was joined by Google and Microsoft, with both companies selling gadgets that use processors designed with Arm’s technologies.
But the list has now grown tremendously, and Tesla, Amazon and Samsung have entered the fray against NVIDIA, with each’s stake in the matter as clear as daylight.
Amazon has its gadgets like Alexa smart speaker, which utilizes Arm’s designs. But its backbone is its Amazon Web Services (AWS) division is based on Arm’s designs. It also has the in-house Graviton series of processors for its cloud computing segments, which utilize Arm’s Neoverse cores.
Coming to Tesla, the company’s bread and butter is dependent on Arm’s HW 3.5+ processor for its vehicles and the chip from Arm is responsible for managing a Tesla’s onboard systems, and crucially, its autonomous driving systems.
This opposition I creating additional problems for NVIDIA whose deal to acquire Arm is already undergoing extensive scrutiny in the United Kingdom and the People’s Republic of China. Currently, the U.K. is investigating whether the acquisition is a threat to its national security, and China’s State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) is also discussing the potential effects of the deal on other parties
