Report: Nvidia's $40 billion bid for Arm has fallen apart

The year-and-a-half-long saga of Nvidia’s $40 billion proposal to acquire Arm may have finally come to an end.

The Financial Times reported late Monday that the Nvidia’s offer to buy Arm from SoftBank had collapsed amid regulatory pressures on three continents. The proposed acquisition had seen increasing opposition in recent months. Regulators in the U.S., U.K. and EU have signaled concerns with various aspects, and a handful of tech giants, such as Qualcomm, Google and Microsoft, have opposed it too.

The deal’s collapse prompted the replacement of CEO Simon Segars by Rene Haas, the head of Arm’s intellectual property division, according to the report.

SoftBank and Nvidia declined to comment.

The Arm acquisition was always a long shot for Nvidia, even by the bold standards set by the company’s CEO Jensen Huang. But as opposition mounted toward the end of last year, it seemed ever more unlikely to clear the necessary hurdles. Arm has said in regulatory filings that the Nvidia deal would give it the cash necessary to continue to improve its technology, which powers most of the world's smartphones.

Now Arm and SoftBank will need to find another way to fund Arm's innovation. One way may be through an initial public offering, and the Financial Times also reported that SoftBank is planning to take Arm public by the end of the year.

Last week, Bloomberg News also reported the deal's imminent collapse, as SoftBank began to prepare for an initial public offering, and Nvidia told partners the deal was through.