Jon Excell

Last week's Poll: Should government halt the Arm Nvidia deal?

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Should the UK government step into to ensure that the sale of Arm Holdings to US chip giant Nvidia doesn't impact UK jobs?

 

The news that UK-based tech giant ARM Holdings is to be sold by its current owner - Japan’s SoftBank Group - to US graphics chip giant Nvidia for $40bn has been described by the company’s founder as a disaster that threatens jobs and damages the UK’s ambitions to grow its tech centre.

The organisation - which was originally spun-out out of UK computer company Acorn in 1990 – is best known as the designer of the ubiquitous computer chips that are at the heart of most of the world’s leading smartphones.

It was sold to its current owner for $32bn four years ago - in a deal part-brokered by then Prime Minister Theresa May - which saw SoftBank agree to keep the HQ in the UK until at least September 2021.

In a statement, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has pledged to honour the terms of this deal, to keep the company’s HQ in Cambridge and even to expand the site to build a “worldclass” AI research facility.

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