Japanese technology investment giant SoftBank Group recently announced a major acquisition plan to acquire server-grade chip design company Ampere Computing for $6.5 billion. This move is seen as SoftBank’s important strategic layout in the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing. Ampere Computing's major investors, including Oracle and Carlyle, also sold its shares in the deal.
Ampere Computing is known for its multi-core CPU design. The "Ultra" model launched in 2023 supports 96 to 192 cores and is compatible with Armv8.6+ architecture and the 5th version of the server basic system architecture. In addition, Ampere released the AmpereOne Aurora chip in 2024, with plans to reach 512 cores, designed specifically for AI workloads. These advanced chip products have attracted great interest from SoftBank, which said the acquisition of Ampere will help achieve its "strategic vision and drive AI and computing innovation."
"The future of artificial superintelligence requires breakthrough computing power. Ampere's expertise in semiconductors and high-performance computing will accelerate this vision and deepen our commitment to US AI innovation." Ampere's founder and CEO Renée J. James also expressed his expectations for the collaboration, believing that this will have synergies with SoftBank's top technology companies.
According to SoftBank's statement, Ampere is expected to cooperate with other companies in the SoftBank Group ecosystem, including investment companies, partners, etc. This strategic layout implies that Ampere's technical capabilities are expected to be combined with Arm Holdings' design advantages to further promote market development.
Some SoftBank's companies, such as LY Corp, a network giant in South Korea and Japan, are operating at super large scale. SoftBank also owns a telecommunications company in Japan, and its Vision Fund has invested in many large e-commerce companies and AI startups such as ByteDance. If SoftBank can guide its companies to adopt Ampere's processors, it could result in a large amount of workload shifting from the x86 architecture.
It is not clear what impact this move will have on the development of Arm's own server processors, but there are reports that Meta has become a new customer of Arm. SoftBank may explore how the dual-server processor business works, or focus Arm on custom product sales, allowing Ampere to focus on the market for ordinary products.
Key points: SoftBank Group acquires Ampere Computing for US$6.5 billion to further expand into the artificial intelligence and high-performance computing market. Ampere focuses on multi-core CPUs with Arm architecture and plans to launch AmpereOne Aurora chips that support 512 cores in the future. Ampere will work with other companies in the SoftBank ecosystem to promote the combination of chip technology and design advantages.