Calls To Review NVIDIA’s Purchase Of ARM Begin

The UK Begins What Is Bound To Be A Long Tale

NVIDIA’s $40 billion acquisition of ARM needs to be reviewed by US, China, UK and the European Union and today the UK’s competition authority has started the whole process off.  The approval for this acquisition will be rather complicated, and will take a long time to play out in each of the involved countries so don’t expect a decision any time soon.  The CMA which has kicked the process off will only be able to review this purchase as it pertains to any anti-competition concerns; security concerns or worries about job losses will be reviewed by separate authorities.

ARM’s founder Herman Hauser has officially expressed concerns of a different nature and is asking for official restrictions on the size of the workforce in the UK to ensure that the current number of people employed by ARM in the UK cannot be changed beyond a certain level.  He is also concerned that NVIDIA will look towards replacing the UK intellectual property laws which currently govern ARM products and patents with the ones that apply to US owned companies.  This could be a very important detail for the future of ARM products, as anyone who is familiar with the fight for Right To Repair laws in the US could tell you.

Regulatory negotiation may not be the most exciting topic to read about but considering how many devices you make use of every day are powered by ARM chips it is a very important to keep an eye out on how these decisions may impact you directly.