SoftBank is a company owned by ARM, which is a unit responsible for the production of processors in the ARM architecture. It is worth a huge amount of money, and the current owner has been looking for a potential buyer for this branch of the company for some time. Almost two years ago, SoftBank was close to reaching an agreement with NVIDIA on the acquisition of ARM, but the transaction was ultimately not finalized. One of the reasons was the pressure of other companies on possible unfair competition in the market. Anti-monopoly pressure on NVIDIA was exerted by, inter alia, Google, Microsoft and Qualcomm. Recently, however, it is the last of the above-mentioned companies that plans to establish a consortium that would come into the possession of ARM.
According to Qualcomm, establishing a consortium would ensure safe competition between all companies. This is important because currently almost all mobile devices available on the market use ARM technology. In the past, a similar solution was considered by Samsung. Currently, Intel is openly talking about the possibility of cooperation with Qualcomm in terms of ARM. It is said in the media that SK Hynix would also like to join the consortium. The transaction would certainly require a significant financial commitment on the part of the companies. Suffice it to recall that the unrealized purchase of ARM by NVIDIA was to cost the company as much as 40 billion of dollars.