Daily Authority: 💪 NVIDIA walking away from Arm?

☕ Good morning! I’m on a new bag of Guatemalan single origin coffee today!

Arm deal off?

Late news this morning that NVIDIA is saying that its deal to buy chip design giant Arm, the company renowned for its tech currently in most smartphones, the Apple A series and M series chips, is off.

• It’s wild because although the initial price was $40 billion, the deal was hinged onto NVIDIA’s stock price.
• Therefore, even with recent market falls, NVIDIA shares nearly doubled from the deal announcement back in September 2020. So for Arm-parent Softbank looking at $80 billion or so on the table, it remains a monster offer.
• SoftBank bought Arm five years ago for $32 billion, by the way.
• But the deal has been looking shaky for a while — back in early December, the Federal Trade Commission was suing NVIDIA to block its purchase of Arm. That added to pressure, with the European Commission looking at the deal, and the UK’s antitrust watchdog, as well as a process for Chinese approval.
• At that time in December, the FTC said: … “[we are] suing to block the largest semiconductor chip merger in history to prevent a chip conglomerate from stifling the innovation pipeline for next-generation technologies.”
• Indeed. NVIDIA was a customer of Arm, and so Qualcomm, Intel, and Google all strenuously argued against the deal.

What’s happened:

• Bloomberg reports: “NVIDIA has told partners that it doesn’t expect the transaction to close, according to one person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. SoftBank, meanwhile, is stepping up preparations for an Arm initial public offering as an alternative to the NVIDIA takeover, another person said.”
• That said, Bloomy also reported that “no final decisions have been made” by either NVIDIA or Arm leadership.
• SoftBank, who probably overpaid for Arm at the time, may prefer to just continue the process despite the difficulties, rather than go down the IPO route.
• As I’ve pointed out before, shed no tears for SoftBank — apparently, it gets a $1.25 billion breakup fee, in cash, if the deal falls through, and keeps as much as $2 billion in total that NVIDIA paid upfront.
• What happens next will be fascinating… will NVIDIA keep pushing? An Arm IPO? Another suitor for Arm?

Roundup

• 📅 Launch date of Galaxy S22 leaks: February 9. Not official, but Evan Blass rarely misses… (Android Authority).
• 📁 Google’s Pixel foldable could be much cheaper than the Galaxy Z Fold 3… $1,400, which is some $400 less than the Fold 3 at MSRP. Yes, if you recall, the Pixel Fold was largely thought to have been canceled, but the fresh rumors point to a revival? (Android Authority).
• 📺 Google’s next Chromecast with Google TV may be a 1080p budget model (Android Authority).
• 😇 Lenovo Halo leaks: A Snapdragon 8 Gen 1 Plus phone expected Q3, with a TSMC-made chipset? (Android Authority).
• 👉 The Steam Deck has a new cloud save system that could be the device’s best feature, maybe, but developers will have to manually enable Dynamic Cloud Sync in their games (The Verge).
• 🍎 Apple hit with weekly €5M fines in Dutch dating app dispute, and wildly the fine rises €5M a week as well, up to €50M, until Apple complies (The Verge).
• 🍏 Three months after launch, Apple still not meeting demand for the M1 MacBook Pro models, especially the M1 Max (MacRumors). By the way, the 256GB M1 Macbook Air in gold (only) is $150 off right now on Amazon in the US for most people…
• 🤖 Meta has a giant new AI supercomputer to shape the metaverse (CNET).
• 🔋 Here’s a report to excite prospective Tesla and EV owners: Panasonic’s new batteries coming next year could increase range by 15-20%, and, the even bigger deal, the batteries are 10-20% cheaper to produce (TechCrunch).
• 🚚 A new Tesla Cybertruck video posted to a forum shows the good and the bad of the giant truck now in a sort of revised version: an enormous windshield wiper, no door handles, changes to the tailgate.
• 🔌 Q: “Wait, so where will apartment dwellers charge their EVs?” A: Streetside spots, hubs, apartment complexes will install them via rebates, and/or we’ll all catch electric buses. There’s also vehicle-integrated PV aka solar cells on top of cars, too, but it’s better on trucks. (Wired).
• 🍵 Kombucha cultures make excellent sustainable water filters to prevent the formation of biofilms, study finds. Better than the commercial versions! (Ars Technica)
• 🌓 After seven years, a spent Falcon 9 rocket stage is on course to (unintentionally?) hit the Moon before March 4, and it’ll be traveling at some 1.6 miles per second (Ars Technica).
• 🔭 James Webb Space Telescope has now arrived at its new home in space (Space).
• 🌋 The Tonga volcano eruption was so powerful, scientists propose new ‘ultra’ classification (Gizmodo).

Chart Tuesday

• Here’s the craziest thing — using OpenStreetMap data, the lighthouses of the world have been plotted, including color-accurate lights and if they blink or flash or are just ablaze all the time – and the gif here doesn’t do it justice:

• Obviously all eyes on Europe here: Norway’s dangerous fjords, the Mediterranean, it’s all stunning!
• …as pointed out by the original tweet where I first saw this.
• I love this slightly different one of Ireland too.

Weighed down by cake,

Tristan Rayner, Senior Editor