You’re not getting it.
Nvidia thinks ARM can do way better. Despite being such an important architecture, its shareholder value has not increased proportionally. ARM has barely made a dent in the server and supercomputer market for example despite many years of promise. AMD and Intel is still kicking ARM's ass there. For laptops, only Apple has successfully used ARM.
Nvidia thinks it can do better with ARM.
Why restrict the sale of ARM, which hurts the shareholders and employees of ARM, in order to increase the shareholder value of Qualcomm, for example?
Where is it in the law that ARM can only be bought via a consortium? And will this consortium pay as much as Nvidia is willing to pay?
Oh I am getting it. I understand the upside ... though the reason ARM designs haven't competed in server or PC or supercomputer until recently is that ARM only recently started designing their own cores with anything other than mobile in mind and partners who did custom cores for other sectors failed (until Apple and Amazon), often for reasons non-technical (see Centriq and Qualcomm). Qualcomm is getting back into the laptop business with their own custom cores in 2023 and we'll see if those are failures. They didn't need to buy ARM. Others are doing so using ARM's designs which are increasingly becoming competitive (X cores, N cores, and V cores, ARM v9) ... but yes this has also meant less profit in recent years so I get why an investor with deep pockets and an aggressive outlook would be beneficial.
However, Nvidia thinking it can do better with ARM isn't the point that regulators are having a problem with! Their concerns with the sale is what happens to the ARM ecosystem of players which is 500+ companies. This isn't about one ARM customer or helping it. Regulators have to look at the larger picture, deciding on the health of the market, not even just CPUs but automotive and AI as well. And Nvidia could substantially harm the larger ARM ecosystem by effectively locking out smaller players or at least gaining intrinsic advantages by gaining access to designs first. This is the most obvious problem but in some even worse then there's the trust issue. ARM holds a lot of customer data information. Thus other companies have to trust ARM for the system to work - it has to be a Switzerland. If it isn't anymore, even if Nvidia doesn't do anything wrong, the perception that they could is still very damaging. A good example is the current global supply chain crises. It relies on a lot of JIT shipments and payments which only works if companies trust each other to be able to do what they say they are going to when they say they are going to. In the current environment, nobody does and the system starts to screech to a halt as companies pull back which just reinforces the lack of trust which causes companies to pull back. Trust is a valuable commodity.
Where is it in the law that ARM can only be bought via a consortium? And will this consortium pay as much as Nvidia is willing to pay?
Many businesses that get acquired have a conflict of interest. It doesn't mean governments should stop them. Free market.
Then you don't support a free market then. You're supporting a conditional free market. In reality, if Nvidia wants to destroy ARM by refusing to give out future licenses, then other companies will respond by adopting something else. Nvidia will just screw ARM, which they will have spent $40 billion to acquire.
It isn't. But Nvidia acquiring ARM will have no impact on a company like Apple. If Nvidia signals that it wants to close ARM to outsiders, customers will have plenty of time to adopt something else.
And ARM/Nvidia are affected by not having this deal go through. You seem to be unfairly favoring one side. In my opinion, consumers will benefit from this deal. I think Nvidia will help accelerate ARM's adoption in laptops, desktops, servers, and supercomputers, giving everyone another option besides AMD, Intel, and Apple. In addition, I think Nvidia IP, money, and leadership will make stock phone ARM designs more competitive against Apple.
Here's the dirty little secret about our economy: pure unrestricted free markets aren't free. I don't mean to be insulting, but that they are is a naive viewpoint. Even the "father of capitalism" Adam Smith recognized that (some of what's attributed to him ain't him, a lot of his writings on the pitfalls of government intervention have been twisted, and he also wrote about the dangers and pitfalls of capitalism ... somehow those aren't as widely promulgated as his other works!).
That's why we have government regulators - the main issue with which haven't been active enough and allowed too much consolidation in too many fields resulting in horrible inefficiencies and too big to fail companies (banking and the defense industry come immediately to mind). So yes, I support a conditional free market, because that's actually far more free.
Just taking this example, Nvidia driving off companies would have a massive ripple effect. It takes time and resources to build new CPU tech on a new ISA - everything from compilers to silicon design. So saying it would have no impact and those companies would have plenty of time is ... well ... rubbish.
It isn't two equal sides. As I wrote above, governments have to look at the whole picture. They don't always get it right or even when doing the right things, do them for the right reasons. No system is perfect - though I'd argue their imperfections have been in not being active enough.
I should also stress that so far only the US regulators have formally objected. The others have not yet. The UK will issue its report in May I think. While the tea leaves don't look good for the deal in those other regulators, they could decide that while they have concerns, they won't formally object and stop it. Nvidia could also take their suits to court and win. Governments lose regulatory battles all the time. The US just lost against Qualcomm. Personally I don't think they should've but they did. (If you’d like to know what laws the FTC is citing in their suit to block Nvidia’s ARM acquisition you can read the complaint and summaries/explanations online. I can try to find a good link if you’d like or you can search yourself).
TLDR: I don't disagree that deep pockets could help ARM maintain its current trajectory as it seeks to expand. I do object that Nvidia needs this deal to compete, they absolutely don't. I'm not sure why you're hung up on that, there are so many other ways for Nvidia to expand its CPU team and this deal is only partly about that in the first place. Market regulation is an important facet of a modern economy that properly applied keeps it far freer than a wild west.
If you want to continue this conversation, maybe DMs or a different thread? Tag me and others. This is pretty off topic for this thread and we shouldn't clog it up for those who want to discuss the OP's point.
It sounds like Softbank no longer wants to own ARM. So really the question becomes who should buy it to "pick up the slack" as it were. I mean the alternative is Softbank shutters ARM which seems worse, right?
Softbank will just go to a different buyer or ARM will have to do an IPO to raise cash itself. They want to sell because they screwed up in other investments (namely WeWork) and need to sell ARM to make up the difference. ARM doesn't get shuttered if this deal fails.
