Nvidia is reportedly in advanced talks to buy Arm from SoftBank (via Bloomberg News). Those involved are said to be aiming to complete the deal, which has the potential to be one of the largest ever in the semiconductor industry, in the next few weeks.
The deal is of interest to Apple watchers as the company is a licensee of the UK firm. Arm architecture is also used in Apple Silicon. Other customers included Qualcomm, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Intel, and Nvidia itself.
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Rosenblatt Securities analyst Hans Mosesmann estimated that Nvidia would have to shell out $55 billion for the deal. In a note published Friday, he wrote:
You need control of BOTH CPU and GPU roadmaps and this, of course, includes data centers. Strategically, Nvidia needs a scalable CPU that can be integrated into its GPU roadmap, as is the case with AMD and Intel.
Is this good or bad news for Apple?