SoftBank has announced plans to acquire the chip startup Ampere for $6.5 billion in an all-cash deal that “broadens its AI infrastructure investments.” For the last eight years, Ampere has been designing high-performance processors tailored for cloud computing, AI workloads, and data centres.
Ampere’s lead investors, private equity firm Carlyle and IT giant Oracle, will sell their shares, which equate to 59.65% and 32.27% stakes in the company, respectively, according to SoftBank. The Japanese telco will retain Ampere as an independent subsidiary based in Santa Clara, once the deal closes in the second half of 2025.
SoftBank’s goal of expanding its AI offerings and investments
SoftBank has been aiming to bolster its AI offerings for a while; the company was reportedly considering acquiring a minority stake in Ampere in 2021, according to Bloomberg, but no deal materialized.
In 2016, it acquired Arm Holdings, a semiconductor design company that licenses its blueprints out to the tech giants that handle implementation and manufacturing, for $31 billion. Arm went public in 2023, but SoftBank retains a majority stake. The chip designer recently announced that it may start selling its own CPUs, which will soon turn it into a fierce competitor to the likes of Nvidia and Qualcomm.
SoftBank is an initial equity funder in the Stargate Project, which will contribute $500 billion in total to generative AI infrastructure, like data centres, in the U.S. over four years. It has also partnered with OpenAI on the development of “Cristal intelligence”, a custom enterprise AI service, and recently bought an old Sharp factory in Japan to build an AI data centre.
How Ampere will help accelerate SoftBank’s AI vision
According to SoftBank, Ampere currently employs about 1,000 semiconductor engineers. Recently, the company’s focus has been developing energy-efficient chips for AI workloads, and its CEO Renée James, is the former president of Intel.
“The future of Artificial Super Intelligence requires breakthrough computing power,” said Masayoshi Son, chairman and chief executive officer of SoftBank Group, in a statement. “Ampere’s expertise in semiconductors and high-performance computing will help accelerate this vision, and deepen our commitment to AI innovation in the United States.”
Ampere’s James added, “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.”
