In September 2020, while the world was grappling with the global pandemic, Nvidia was making moves to purchase British software and semiconductor design firm, Arm Holdings. Its majority shareholder, Softbank – the same Japanese investment firm that has invested so heavily in OpenAI and many other AI players approved the deal, and the agreed figure was set at $40 billion. If it had been finalized, it would have been one of the largest semiconductor company acquisitions ever, falling just behind Dell 's $64 billion purchase of EMC in 2016.
Nvidia pledged to maintain Arm's licensing model and would continue to work with major partners like Samsung, Qualcomm, and Apple, among others. But those same companies weren't so keen, and many raised concerns to regulators over anti-competitiveness.
Authorities in the UK and EU, which had already been scrutinizing such a large-scale deal, dived into the details and announced investigations in early 2021 . They raised concerns that a deal of this magnitude between two key players in the technology hardware space could result in worse products for consumers, alongside higher prices. With Arm's hardware present in a range of components from different companies, it was felt that with ownership, Nvidia would have too much power over its competitors.
The back and forth went on for several more months before the deal ultimately started to fall apart in early 2022. Despite Nvidia's efforts, regulators finally put a halt to i t, forcing Nvidia to pay a $1.25 billion exit fee.
Softbank ultimately took ARM into an initial public offering the next year, valuing the company at just under $55 billion. As of February 2026, ARM has a market cap of $133 billion.
Nvidia continued to work with Arm on the CPU cores of its leading chips, and will continue to do so even after divesting itself of all remaining shares. Its Grace CPUs and Rubin CPUs are a major part of its AI hardware offerings, and that's unlikely to change in the future.
That deal arose in the wake of all the other major AI infrastructure deals of 2025, including a number of circular deals among the main players . Nvidia now holds stakes in many of the companies that are helping to make it the most valuable in the world. It has part stakes in Intel, CoreWeave, Nokia, and Synopsys. Its most recent deal saw it invest $20 billion in Groq to acquire both its inferencing hardware technology and some of its key staff members, who will now work for Nvidia to advance its various AI hardware efforts.
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Key considerations
- Investor positioning can change fast
- Volatility remains possible near catalysts
- Macro rates and liquidity can dominate flows
Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/nvidia-sells-off-final-arm-shares-but-licensing-deals-will-continue-usd140-million-stake-sold-equating-to-1-1-million-shares#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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Informational only. No financial advice. Do your own research.