The logo of Japanese company SoftBank Group is seen outside the company’s headquarters in Tokyo on January 22, 2025.
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SoftBank Group said Wednesday that it will acquire Ampere Computing, a startup that designed an Arm-based server chip, for $6.5 billion.
The Japanese giant expects the deal to close in the second half of 2025, according to a statement.
Carlyle Group and Oracle both have committed to selling their respective stakes in Ampere, which will operate as an independent subsidiary and will keep its headquarters in Santa Clara, California, according to SoftBank.
“Ampere’s expertise in semiconductors and high-performance computing will help accelerate this vision, and deepens our commitment to AI innovation in the United States,” SoftBank Group Chairman and CEO Masayoshi Son was quoted as saying in a separate statement.
The startup has 1,000 semiconductor engineers, SoftBank said.
SoftBank has been broadening its investments in AI infrastructure, including a partnership with OpenAI announced last month to create enterprise level AI and through its involvement in U.S. President Donald Trump’s $500 billion private AI investment project Stargate.
“With a shared vision for advancing AI, we are excited to join SoftBank Group and partner with its portfolio of leading technology companies,” said Renee James, Founder and CEO of Ampere. “This is a fantastic outcome for our team, and we are excited to drive forward our AmpereOne® roadmap for high performance Arm processors and AI.”
Softbank acquired British chip designer Arm in 2016 for $32 billion, with the company launching its initial public offering in 2023.
Renee James, founder and chief executive officer of Ampere Computing LLC, speaks at the ai-Pulse conference in Paris, Nov. 7, 2024.
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Chips that use Arm’s instruction set represent an alternative to chips based on the x86 architecture, which Intel and AMD sell. Arm-based chips often consume less energy.
Ampere’s founder and CEO, Renee James, established the startup in 2017 after 28 years at Intel, where she rose to the position of president.
Leading cloud infrastructure provider Amazon Web Services offers a Graviton Arm chip for rent that have become popular among large customers. In October, Microsoft started selling access to its own Cobalt 100 Arm-based cloud computing instances.
Shares of SoftBank were last seen trading down about 2% on Thursday.