November 6 news, according to informed sources, SoftBank Group considered acquiring US chipmaker Marvell earlier this year. If the deal is concluded, it will be the largest acquisition in the chip industry.

According to informed sources, SoftBank founder Sun Zhengyi has been paying close attention to Marvell for years, seeing it as a potential acquisition target to help build an AI hardware empire.

Several months ago, SoftBank tried to contact Marvell, but the two sides failed to reach a consensus on the terms of the transaction.

Although the negotiations are currently at a standstill, there is still a possibility for the deal to be restarted. However, the negotiations face multiple challenges, including regulatory approval, team integration, and competition from other biddin

Marvell's current market value is approximately $80 billion (approximately RMB 570 billion), which is a 16% decrease from the beginning of the year. This is in stark contrast to the strong performance of its peers such as Arm ($170 billion), NVIDIA,

It is revealed that SoftBank's vision is to deeply integrate Marvell with Arm, the UK's chip design company which it already holds a controlling stake. This combination will connect the entire industry chain from chip architecture design to finished

This strategy aligns with Sun Zhengyi's recent focus on betting on AI hardware. In March, SoftBank just acquired data center processor design company Ampere Computing.

Meanwhile, Sun Zhengyi and Arm CEO Rene Haas are working together to develop their own AI chips, which are expected to be released next year.

SoftBank's move comes at a time when global technology giants are raising a wave of investment in AI infrastructure.

NVIDIA, with its leading position in the field of AI chips, has seen its stock price surge 1300% over five years to become the first company in the world with a market value exceeding $5 trillion.

In order to keep up with the competition, SoftBank jointly launched the Star Gate data center project with OpenAI and Oracle in January this year, which has a scale of up to $500 billion. Although Sun Zhengyi promised to invest $100 billion immediate

This article is from Tencent Tech