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Qualcomm wants to team up with its rivals to buy Arm
- Qualcomm says it’s willing to team up with a consortium of rivals to buy Arm.
- Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon reckons a consortium would help keep Arm independent.
- Intel also suggested this idea back in February.
NVIDIA called off its $40 billion deal to buy Arm earlier this year, citing regulatory hurdles. However, Arm is still up for grabs and Qualcomm has proposed a rather interesting solution.
Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon told the Financial Times that the company was interested in investing in Arm. However, Amon said Qualcomm was even willing to team up with its rivals to buy the Softbank-owned chip designer outright.
“You’d need to have many companies participating so they have a net effect that Arm is independent,” Amon was quoted as saying by the outlet.
An alternative to one company owning Arm
Arm has long been seen as an independent player in the chip industry, as its architectures and/or silicon designs are used by everyone from Apple, Nintendo, and Qualcomm to MediaTek, HUAWEI, and Samsung. So a consortium of the company’s major customers buying it could theoretically allay regulatory concerns that this independent status is in danger.
Qualcomm wouldn’t be the first to suggest that a consortium buys Arm either, as Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger mooted the idea as well.
“We’re not big users of Arm, but we do use Arm. We’re going to get to be bigger users of Arm as we make it part of our IFS (Intel Foundry Services) agenda as well,” Gelsinger was quoted as saying by Reuters in February. “So if a consortium would emerge, we would probably be very favorable to participate in it in some manner.”