Nvidia CEO 'confident' of getting regulators' OK for Arm deal

Taipei

NVIDIA Corp's chief executive officer (CEO) Jensen Huang said he is still confident regulators will green-light its US$40 billion acquisition of SoftBank Group's Arm Ltd, despite growing scepticism about the deal's prospects.

Government approval in China and elsewhere may come later this year or in 2022, he said over video at the Computex conference in Taipei on Wednesday.

He pointed out that an earlier acquisition took about a year and a half, so it is likely the current process will be similar.

"I expect this one to take 18 months, so that's later this year, early next year. I am confident about the transaction," he said.

"Our companies are complementary so we'll bring, by nature, innovations that come as a result of companies that come together and offer complementary things."

The comments come as the semiconductor industry's biggest acquisition faces increasing headwinds from regulators in China and the UK. Chinese technology companies including Huawei Technologies are lobbying their government against the transaction, while a regulator in the UK, where Arm is based, said it plans to intervene on national security grounds.

At the same time, Arm is mired in a legal battle for control of its China unit with the CEO there, who was fired by SoftBank but has refused to leave.

Arm designs the processors and architecture used by the vast majority of mobile electronics devices, underpinning Apple's in-house M1 chips and Samsung Electronics' Exynos silicon, among others.

Nvidia is committed to paying Masayoshi Son's SoftBank US$2 billion whether the deal goes through or not.

The US chipmaker's stock has climbed more than 25 per cent since the acquisition was announced last September.

"The regulators are looking for: Is this good for competition? Is this pro-competitive and brings innovation to the market? Does it give customers more choice, does it give customers more offerings and more choice?" he said Mr Huang. "You could see that on the first principle that our companies are completely complementary." BLOOMBERG