SoftBank to acquire chip designer Ampere in $6.5 billion deal2025-03-21 16:48 by DanielaTags: Softbank, Ampere
SoftBank Group announced on Wednesday that it will acquire Ampere Computing, a chip designer founded by former Intel executive Renee James, through a $6.5 billion all-cash deal as a strategic move to broaden its investment in AI infrastructure. Ampere will be operating as a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank after the deal, which is expected to close in the second half of 2025. Carlyle and Oracle, Ampere’s lead investors, will sell their shares in the Santa Clara, California, startup. According to SoftBank’s statement, Carlyle holds a 59.65% stake while Oracle holds 32.27%. The startup employs 1,000 semiconductor engineers. In 2021, SoftBank considered acquiring a minority stake in Ampere, which was then valued at $8 billion, per Bloomberg. SoftBank is the largest shareholder of Arm Holdings, and Ampere has developed a server chip based on the ARM compute platform, positioning the two companies as strong partners. (SoftBank acquired British chip designer Arm for $32 billion in 2016, and it became publicly traded in 2023.) Ampere’s customers include Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba, and Tencent, as well as companies like HPE and Supermicro. Read more -here-
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