The Competition and Markets Authority believes further investigation into the planned merger is warranted.
The United Kingdom competition authority said it has uncovered competition concerns with Nvidia’s proposed acquisition of the intellectual property business of UK-based Arm, following an initial investigation that was sparked by national security concerns. In delivering its report to the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS), the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) outlined that the merged business would have the ability and incentive to harm the competitiveness of Nvidia’s rivals by restricting access to Arm’s intellectual property (IP). Currently, Arm’s IP is used by companies to produce semiconductor chips and related products that rival products produced by Nvidia. These companies include Intel, Qualcomm, AMD, and Xilinx, which recently expressed outrage over the deal. The CMA noted that if the proposed merger were to go ahead, it would result in « foreclosure in the supply of CPUs, interconnect products, GPUs, and SoCs across several global markets, spanning the datacentre, internet-of-things, automotive, and gaming console applications ». In addition, the report said while Nvidia offered a set of « behavioural remedies » to address the CMA’s concern, the competition authority found the suggestions would only result in « considerable specification, circumvention, and monitoring and enforcement risks », and not alleviate any of its concerns.
