According to Bloomberg, people familiar with the matter revealed that SoftBank Group had considered acquiring U.S. chipmaker Marvell Technology Inc. earlier this year. If the deal was completed, it would become the largest acquisition in the semiconductor industry to date. SoftBank intends to merge Marvell with Arm Holdings, a British chip design company it controls, to further lay out AI infrastructure.
Sources said SoftBank Group founder Masayoshi Son has repeatedly evaluated Marvell as a potential acquisition target as part of his strategy to bet on artificial intelligence hardware. SoftBank approached Marvell several months ago, but the two sides were unable to agree on specific deal terms. The two parties are currently not actively negotiating the acquisition, but do not rule out restarting relevant discussions in the future.
Affected by this news, Marvell's stock price rose 13% in the Asian market. The company’s stock price has fallen by 16% this year, with a market value of approximately US$80 billion, while NVIDIA, Broadcom and Arm have risen sharply this year. Arm’s current market value is approximately US$170 billion. Analysts say Marvell may still attract other potential acquirers in the future.
Marvell is led by CEO Matthew Murphy and focuses on the development of semiconductor chips and related technologies for data centers. The company's revenue for the quarter ended August 2 hit a record $2 billion. SoftBank has continued to expand its AI hardware layout in recent years. In March, it acquired server processor designer Ampere Computing LLC for US$6.5 billion. SoftBank acquired Arm in 2016 and listed Arm in 2023. It currently holds nearly 90% of the shares. Son and Arm CEO Rene Haas are working together to develop AI chips, which they plan to launch next year.
In recent years, NVIDIA's stock price has surged 1,300% due to demand for AI data centers, and its market value has exceeded US$5 trillion. Industry leaders such as Marvell and Arm are actively seeking orders from customers such as OpenAI and Microsoft. Technology companies are expected to invest more than US$1 trillion in AI chips and infrastructure in the future. Although Marvell's custom chip business has promising prospects, with major customers including Amazon Cloud and Microsoft, the company suffered its largest decline in decades in March this year when revenue expectations fell below market highs.
If Marvell and Arm successfully merge, they may become a stronger chip competitor in the market. Marvell is good at integrating Arm and other solutions into finished product blueprints and handing them over to foundries such as TSMC for production. The acquisition faces multiple obstacles besides price - the U.S. government is promoting the development of the local semiconductor industry, and there are still doubts about whether to approve the sale to Japan. In addition, industry antitrust pressure cannot be ignored. The United States, Europe and China have forced NVIDIA to abandon the acquisition of Arm in the past.
According to people familiar with the matter, there is no clear plan on how Arm and Marvell will integrate their management teams. In addition to mergers and acquisitions, SoftBank is also actively expanding its business. In January this year, it announced that it would jointly invest US$500 billion with OpenAI and Oracle to build the data center project Stargate in the United States. However, due to differences in location selection, the progress was far slower than expected.