The chips have been in hot demand during the pandemic as lockdowns keep people at home. Nvidia is a fast-growing industry player best known for making the graphics chips that power videogames like on the wildly popular Nintendo Switch. The deal, one of the largest semiconductor takeovers ever, marks a win for SoftBank and its chief executive, Masayoshi Son, which bought Arm four years ago for $32 billion and had struggled to jump-start growth in the business.įor Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang, it is the biggest gamble since he helped co-found the chip maker in 1993. A union would instantly lift Nvidia, whose stock has been one of the market's best performers this year, into a dominant force in the market for smartphones and a big supplier of technology for a range of other devices from smart speakers to fitness trackers. Nvidia, which makes graphics processors, and Arm, which designs microprocessors that power most of the world's smartphones, may not be household names, but they are some of the biggest players in the chip industry.

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