NVIDIA has reached an agreement with SoftBank to acquire Arm in a transaction valued at $40 billion. The combination brings together NVIDIA’s leading AI computing platform with Arm’s vast ecosystem to create the premier computing company for the age of artificial intelligence, accelerating innovation while expanding into large, high-growth markets. SoftBank will remain committed to Arm’s long-term success through its ownership stake in NVIDIA, expected to be under 10 percent.
“AI is the most powerful technology force of our time and has launched a new wave of computing,” Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA, said “In the years ahead, trillions of computers running AI will create a new internet-of-things that is thousands of times larger than today’s internet-of-people. Our combination will create a company fabulously positioned for the age of AI.
“Simon Segars and his team at Arm have built an extraordinary company that is contributing to nearly every technology market in the world. Uniting NVIDIA’s AI computing capabilities with the vast ecosystem of Arm’s CPU, we can advance computing from the cloud, smartphones, PCs, self-driving cars and robotics, to edge IoT, and expand AI computing to every corner of the globe.
“This combination has tremendous benefits for both companies, our customers, and the industry. For Arm’s ecosystem, the combination will turbocharge Arm’s R&D capacity and expand its IP portfolio with NVIDIA’s world-leading GPU and AI technology.
“Arm will remain headquartered in Cambridge. We will expand on this great site and build a world-class AI research facility, supporting developments in healthcare, life sciences, robotics, self-driving cars and other fields. And, to attract researchers and scientists from the U.K. and around the world to conduct groundbreaking work, NVIDIA will build a state-of-the-art AI supercomputer, powered by Arm CPUs. Arm Cambridge will be a world-class technology center.”
“Arm gives us the critical mass to invest in the U.K. We will build a world-class AI research center in Cambridge — the university town of Isaac Newton and Alan Turing, for whom NVIDIA’s Turing GPUs and Isaac robotics platform were named. This NVIDIA research center will be the home of a state-of-the-art AI supercomputer powered by Arm CPUs. The computing infrastructure will be a major attraction for scientists from around the world doing groundbreaking research in healthcare, life sciences, robotics, self-driving cars, and other fields. This center will serve as our European hub to collaborate with universities, industrial partners, and startups. It will also be the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute for Europe, where we teach the methods of applying this marvelous AI technology.”
Commitment to Arm and the UK
NVIDIA will build on Arm’s R&D presence in the U.K., establishing a new global center of excellence in AI research at Arm’s Cambridge campus. NVIDIA will invest in a state-of-the-art, Arm-powered AI supercomputer, training facilities for developers and a startup incubator, which will attract world-class research talent and create a platform for innovation and industry partnerships in fields such as healthcare, robotics and self-driving cars.
“Artificial intelligence is the most powerful technology force of our time,” Huang added. “It is the automation of automation, where software writes software. While AI began in the data center, it is moving quickly to the edge — to stores, warehouses, hospitals, streets, and airports, where smart sensors connected to AI computers can speed checkouts, direct forklifts, orchestrate traffic, and save power. In time, there will be trillions of these small autonomous computers powered by AI, connected by massively powerful cloud data centers in every corner of the world.
“But in many ways, the field is just getting started. That’s why we are excited to be creating a world-class AI laboratory in Cambridge, at the Arm headquarters: a Hadron collider or Hubble telescope, if you like, for artificial intelligence.
“NVIDIA, together with Arm, is uniquely positioned to launch this effort. NVIDIA is the leader in AI computing, while Arm is present across a vast ecosystem of edge devices, with more than 180 billion units shipped. With this newly announced combination, we are creating the leading computing company for the age of AI. Arm is an incredible company and it employs some of the greatest engineering minds in the world. But we believe we can make Arm even more incredible and take it to even higher levels. We want to propel it — and the U.K. — to global AI leadership.
“We will create an open center of excellence in the area once home to giants like Isaac Newton and Alan Turing, for whom key NVIDIA technologies are named. Here, leading scientists, engineers and researchers from the U.K. and around the world will come develop their ideas, collaborate and conduct their ground-breaking work in areas like healthcare, life sciences, self-driving cars and other fields. We want the U.K. to attract the best minds and talent from around the world.”
The center in Cambridge will include an Arm/NVIDIA-based supercomputer. Expected to be one of the most powerful AI supercomputers in the world, this system will combine state-of-the art Arm CPUs, NVIDIA’s most advanced GPU technology, and NVIDIA Mellanox DPUs, along with high-performance computing and AI software from NVIDIA and its many partners. For reference, the world’s fastest supercomputer, Fugaku in Japan, is Arm-based, and NVIDIA’s own supercomputer Selene is the seventh most powerful system in the world.
In this center, NVIDIA will also expand research partnerships within the UK, with academia and industry to conduct research covering leading-edge work in healthcare, autonomous vehicles, robotics, data science and more. NVIDIA already has successful research partnerships with King’s College and Oxford.
NVIDIA’s education wing, the Deep Learning Institute, has trained more than 250,000 students on both fundamental and applied AI. NVIDIA will create an institute in Cambridge, and make our curriculum available throughout the UK. This will provide both young people and mid-career workers with new AI skills, creating job opportunities and preparing the next generation of U.K. developers for AI leadership.
Much of the leading-edge work in AI is done by start-ups. NVIDIA Inception, a start-up accelerator program, has more than 6,000 members — with more than 400 based in the U.K. NVIDIA will further its investment in this area by providing UK start-ups with access to the Arm supercomputer, connections to researchers from NVIDIA and partners, technical training and marketing promotion to help them grow.
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