SoftBank Group of Japan, led by Chair Son Jeong-ui (Japanese name Masayoshi Son), said on the 26th that it completed the acquisition of U.S. semiconductor design company Ampere Computing for $6.5 billion (about 9.5 trillion won), making it a wholly owned subsidiary.
SoftBank Group said in a news release the same day that it acquired all equity in Ampere through its subsidiary SB6, and noted that through strategic collaboration, Ampere can integrate expertise in areas such as Arm's chip development in a way that complements the design capabilities of the group's existing U.K. subsidiary, Arm Holdings.
Founded in 2017, Ampere is a U.S. semiconductor design company with about 1,000 engineers and is known to have strengths in large-scale data processing and artificial intelligence (AI).
Earlier, SoftBank Group released its plan to acquire Ampere in March. At the time, Ampere's equity was held by U.S. private equity firm Carlyle at 59.65%, U.S. software corporations Oracle at 32.27%, and a related company of U.K. semiconductor design corporations Arm at 8.08%, respectively.
SoftBank Group acquired Arm for about 3.3 trillion yen (about 32.4 trillion won) in 2016 and listed it on the U.S. Nasdaq market in Sep. 2023, positioning it as the core of its artificial intelligence (AI) strategy.