Rumor: Chinese tech companies want government to block takeover of ARM

Chinese tech companies, including Huawei, are rumored to want the Chinese government to block Nvidia’s planned acquisition of ARM. The companies fear that after the acquisition they will no longer have access to ARM’s chip architecture.

Therefore, the companies want the Chinese government to at least impose strict conditions on the acquisition, Bloomberg reports based on anonymous sources. If ARM and its chip architecture goes into the hands of Nvidia, the US government could force it to cut ties with Chinese companies. As a result, those companies would no longer be able to design ARM processors, as Huawei has done in the past ten years.

Last month, Nvidia announced its intention to acquire ARM from Japan’s Softbank for approximately $ 40 billion. The Chinese government has something to say about the acquisition, as China is a big market for ARM. The company’s headquarters are in Cambridge and would remain there after the acquisition, Nvidia has said. Nvidia itself comes from the US state of California: its headquarters are in Santa Clara, a city in that state.

The acquisition has yet to be approved by antitrust authorities in more countries than just China, namely the UK, Europe and the US. Nvidia, ARM and SoftBank expect it to take eighteen months for the transaction to be completed.