SoftBank to buy Silicon Valley Chip Start-up ampere for $ 6.5 billion

SoftBank said Wednesday that he had agreed to pay $ 6.5 billion for the Silicon Valley Chip Ampere Computing start-up, doubling a commitment that the technology that originated in smartphones will come to dominate the world's data centers.

The agreement also reflects the belief of the Japanese conglomerate that amps chips can begin to play an important role in artificial intelligence, where Nvidia has harvested more rewards so far.

Ampere was founded eight years ago to sell chips for data centers based on Arm Holdings technology, a British company that authorizes chips designs that have driven almost all mobile phones. Softbank, which bought ARM in 2016, has been working to have chips based on the arm technology used more widely and for different tasks.

“The future of artificial superintelligence requires an innovative computer power,” said Masayoshi's son, president and executive director of SoftBank, in prepared comments. “Ampere's experience in semiconductors and high performance computer science will help accelerate this vision and deepen our commitment to innovation in the United States.”

SoftBank said it would operate amps as a subsidiary of absolute property under its own name.

The sale is produced in the midst of a burst of changing offers and alliances driven by a furious demand for chips used to feed ai applications such as Openai chatgpt. SoftBank, in particular, has announced a series of transactions in an attempt to play a more important role in the field.

In his most flying movement to date, Mr. Son joined President Trump in January to announce an initiative called Stargate, along with Sam Altman, OpenAi Chief, and Larry Ellison, president and founder of the Oracle software manufacturer, which is the largest investor and customer of ampere.

Mr. Son, Mr. Altman and Mr. Ellison said that Stargate would invest up to $ 500 billion to build a variety of US data centers to feed OpenAI operations, starting with a location in Texas. Nvidia appeared as a key technology partner for the company; Supplies chips called Graphics Processing Units, or GPU, which represent most of the calculations of ai.

Another type of chip also plays central roles in ai, these are the microprocessors designed by Intel, micro devices and arm that manage the general purpose computing calculations. These chips, which work together with the GPUs and are called “host” processors, manage work as the creation of special software programs called models. A microprocessor is typically used for every four NVIDIA GPU sold.

These microprocessors are also sometimes used to handle a so -called “inference” task, which includes providing answers to chatbots consultations. Until now, Intel and AMD chips represented almost all processors and microprocessors hosts used for inference.

But some influential companies want to change that. Nvidia has begun to strongly push arm processors as an option for host microprocessors instead of Intel or AMD chips.

A lot of money is at stake. IDC, a market research firm, predicts that the microprocessor market sold for the growing to $ 33 billion by 2030 from $ 12.5 billion in 2025.

AMD and Intel have indicated that changing the arm may require laborious changes in the software. They added that Nvidia was not exclusively supporting arm technology and still admitted her chips as an option along with her last GPU.

“Nvidia is still an important partner,” said Ronak Singhal, chief architect of the Cips Xeon line of the Intel Data Center.

Ampere has mainly marketed its microprocessors for general data centers work. But recently he announced plans for a chip, called Aurora, which presents up to 512 small calculating engines, a design that the company says it is especially suitable for ai inference applications.

The company, directed by Renée James, a former Intel executive, has had some successes. But the biggest spending in the sector, giant companies such as amazon, Google and Microsoft, have focused more recently on developing their own microprocessors depending on the technology of the arms, instead of depending on the start-up.

Oracle is an exception. He has offered online services promoted by ampere chips, and has revealed capital and debt investments in the company. As of May, Oracle said he had a 29 percent participation in amps; He put the value of his investments, after taking into account the losses, at $ 1.5 billion.

As part of the purchase, Oracle and Carlyle Group, the great private capital firm that is also an important amps investor, agreed to sell its participations in amps, SoftBank said.

Bloomberg reported Last month that softbank was close to an agreement to buy amps.