SoftBank Close To Selling Chip Designer To Nvidia For $40B

SoftBank Group Corp. may announce the sale of British chip designer Arm Holdings to Nvidia Corp. NVDA in a cash-and-stock transaction valued at more than $40 billion as early as next week.

That's according to the Wall Street Journal, citing sources familiar with the deal.

The sale process, first reported by Bloomberg in July, comes just four years after SoftBank bought Arm Holdings for $32 billion.

Arm, known for designing microprocessors found in smartphones, has been in exclusive talks with Nvidia for several weeks, the report continued.

Nvidia's chips are used to power high-tech devices as well.

If the transaction is official, it would be one of the largest semiconductor deals ever. It comes just two months after Analog Devices Inc. ADI bought Maxim Integrated for $22 billion. 

SoftBank's SFTBF SFTBY Vision Fund once held a $3.6 billion stake in Nvidia, which it sold in January 2019.

The company's billionaire founder and CEO, Masayoshi Son, recently announced that he is creating an asset management company with $555 million in capital to invest in other major tech companies in the world, including Apple Inc. AAPL, Amazon.com AMZN and Facebook Inc. FB.