SoftBank to buy Start-up ampes of the Silicon Valley chip for $ 6.5 billion

Wednesday Softbank said he agreed to pay $ 6.5 billion for the start of the Silicon Valley chip Ampere computingdoubled on a bet that the technology that originated in smartphones will dominate The Data Center of the World.

The agreement also reflects the belief of the Japanese conglomerate that the amps chips can start playing a significant role in artificial intelligence, where Nvidia So far he has collected most of the prizes.

Ampre was founded eight years ago to sell chips for data center based on Arm Holdings technology, a British company that fires the chip projects that have fueled almost all cell phones. SoftBank, which purchased Arm in 2016, worked to have chips based on ARM technology used in a wider way and for different tasks.

“The future of artificial superintelligence requires revolutionary computer power,” said Masayoshi, president and CEO of Softbank, in prepared observations. “The experience of amps in semiconductors and in high performance calculation will help accelerate this vision and deepen our commitment to the innovation of artificial intelligence in the United States.”

Softbank said he would work amps as a subsidiary entirely owned by his name.

The sale comes in the midst of a burst of business and changing alliances guided by a furious question for the chips used to feed artificial intelligence applications such as Opens’s Chatgpt. SoftBank, in particular, has announced a series of transactions in an attempt to play a more important role on the field.

In his most sprayed move to date, Mr. Son joined the Trump president in January to announce An initiative called StargateTogether with Sam Altman, head of Openi, and Larry Ellison, president and founder of the Oracle software manufacturer, who is the largest investor and customer customer.

Mr. Son, Altman and Mr. Ellison have said that Stargate will invest up to $ 500 billion to build a series of US data centers to feed Openi’s operations, starting from a headquarters in Texas. Nvidia was listed as a key technological partner for the company; It provides chips called graphic processing units or GPU, which explain most of the AI ​​calculations.

Another type of chip also carries out central roles in AI, these are the microprocessors designed by Intel, advanced micro devices and arm that manage the calculation calculations for general use. These chips, which work alongside the GPUs and are called “host” processors, manage artificial intelligence works such as the construction of special software programs called Models. A microprocessor is generally used for every four Nvidia GPU sold.

These microprocessors are sometimes used also to manage artificial intelligence activity called “inferncing”, which includes the supply of responses to the query in chatbots. Until now, the Intel and AMD chips have represented almost all processors and microprocessors of artificial intelligence hosts used for the influence.

But some influential companies want to change it. Nvidia began to heavily push the arm processors as a option for host microprocessors rather than for Intel or AMD chips.

A lot of money is at stake. IDC, a market research company, provides that the microprocessors market sold for the IA will increase to $ 33 billion by 2030 of $ 12.5 billion in 2025.

AMD and Intel have underlined that the transition to the arm can require laborious changes to the software. They added that Nvidia was not supporting the arm technology exclusively and still supported their chips as an option together with its last GPUs.

“Nvidia is still our significant partner,” said Ronak Singhal, architect leader of the Intel Xeon of Data Center.

Ampere has mainly marketed its microprocessors for data center works for general use. But he recently announced the plans for a chip, called Aurora, which presents up to 512 small calculation engines, a design that according to the company is particularly suitable for infinite applications.

The company, led by Renée James, a former Intel manager, has had some successes. But the greatest spenders in the giant company-company such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft-Si are recently concentrated more on the development of their microprocessors based on ARM technology, rather than relying on the start-up.

Oracle is an exception. He offered online services fueled by hazardous chips and disclosed equity and debt investments in society. Starting from May, Oracle said he held a 29 % participation in amps; He put the value of his investments, after keeping the losses, to $ 1.5 billion.

As part of the purchase, Oracle and Carlyle Group, the large private equity company that is also a large enlarged investor, has agreed to sell its mail in amps, said Softbank.

Bloomberg shown Last month that SoftBank was close to an agreement to buy amps.