SoftBank’s About to Drop $6.5 Billion on Ampere – and Might Combine It with Arm and Graphcore
So here’s the scoop: SoftBank is going all-in on the AI and chip game. They’re officially buying Ampere Computing for a whopping $6.5 billion, and yeah, that rumor that had been floating around? Totally real now.
💻 What’s Ampere Anyway?
Ampere is a chip company based in Santa Clara, California (aka Silicon Valley central), and they’re known for making high-performance, super energy-efficient processors. These chips are built using Arm’s tech and are optimized for AI and cloud workloads—basically, perfect for the direction tech is heading.
They’ve also got Oracle backing them, so they’re no small player in the game.
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🤝 What’s the Deal?
SoftBank announced on March 19, 2025, that they’re acquiring Ampere through their investment arm, Silver Bands 6. Once the deal’s done, Ampere will become a fully owned SoftBank company.
SoftBank already owns most of Arm, and one of its companies even holds an 8.08% stake in Ampere already. So this move is kind of like pulling the whole squad together.
But before the deal is officially a done deal, it still needs to go through all the usual red tape—regulatory approvals, U.S. antitrust checks, and a CFIUS review (that’s the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., in case you’re wondering).
💡 Why This Is a Big Deal
This could be the start of Arm moving from just designing chips to actually manufacturing them too. That would put them in direct competition with companies that currently use Arm’s designs—which is a huge shift. And it means Arm might start becoming a major player in the data center scene.
In a statement, SoftBank said that Ampere’s chip development skills will “complement the design strengths of Arm Holdings” and that Ampere will also be working with other SoftBank companies and partners.
Also, fun fact: the deal is being funded with help from Mizuho Bank, and The Raine Group is helping out as financial adviser. Morrison & Foerster is handling legal stuff.
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🧠 What About Graphcore?
Remember Graphcore? SoftBank scooped them up too a little while back for somewhere between $400M and $500M. They were once seen as an up-and-coming rival to Nvidia and AMD, but kind of flopped after missing the AI boom.
Now that SoftBank owns Arm, Ampere, and Graphcore, it’s totally possible they’ll combine all three to build one big, AI-focused chip powerhouse.
Ampere’s not changing anything just yet—they’ll keep operating as usual until the deal is fully closed, which is expected in the second half of 2025.
But yeah, keep an eye on this space. With AI booming and chip wars heating up, this move could be the start of something massive for SoftBank’s role in the future of computing.
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