SoftBank’s Ampere Takeover Faces Closer Scrutiny From FTC (1)

SoftBank Group Corp.’s $6.5 billion acquisition of semiconductor designer Ampere Computing LLC is facing a potentially lengthy probe by the US government.

The Federal Trade Commission, one of two regulators charged with reviewing deals, has opened an in-depth investigation of the takeover, known formally as a second request for information about the transaction, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified because it isn’t public yet.

Only a small portion of deals face such follow-up requests. In some instances, investigations can last for a year or more and are a precursor to a lawsuit to block the deal.

A representative for Ampere declined to comment. A SoftBank spokesperson was unable to immediately comment, while a representative for the FTC didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Shares of SoftBank were down around 2% Wednesday morning in Tokyo.

SoftBank’s all-cash transaction was announced in March and represents another step in billionaire founder Masayoshi Son’s push to add artificial intelligence infrastructure capabilities. Ampere makes server processors that are one of the main components of data center computers.

Read more: SoftBank Seals $6.5 Billion Deal for Chip Designer Ampere

SoftBank is already the majority owner of Arm Holdings Plc, whose technology is used across the electronics industry and increasingly as the basis of server chips. Ampere is a customer that licenses Arm’s fundamental technology.

With its ownership in Arm, UK chip design unit Graphcore Ltd. and Ampere, SoftBank would hold key technologies in AI chipmaking, Son said at a shareholders’ meeting last week.

When the Ampere deal was announced, SoftBank and Arm said they intended to close the transaction in the second half of 2025. Their plan called for Ampere to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank, retaining both its name and its headquarters in Santa Clara, California.

SoftBank and Arm have previously faced antitrust scrutiny. SoftBank’s 2020 plan to sell Arm to Nvidia Corp. was investigated by agencies around the world and ultimately abandoned after being challenged in the US and the UK.

Arm is also embroiled in a global licensing dispute with Qualcomm Inc., which lodged antitrust complaints with the European Commission, the FTC and South Korea’s antitrust regulator late last year, Bloomberg News has reported. Qualcomm alleges that Arm is hurting competition by restricting access to its technology after operating an open network for more than 20 years.

(Updates with market reaction and background from the fourth paragraph.)

--With assistance from Josh Sisco, Min Jeong Lee and Vlad Savov.

To contact the reporters on this story:
Liana Baker in New York at lbaker75@bloomberg.net;
Ryan Gould in New York at rgould21@bloomberg.net;
Ian King in San Francisco at ianking@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Sarah Frier at sfrier1@bloomberg.net;
Ben Scent at bscent@bloomberg.net

Michael Hytha, Jillian Ward

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