Softbank buys the chip maker Amputing for $ 6.5 billion, deepening the bet of artificial intelligence

Written by Stephen Nils and Anton Bridge

Santa Clara, California/Tokyo (Reuters) -Softbank Group is to accelerate its transfer to chips technology companies with the purchase of 6.5 billion dollars, a startup in the United States established by the former Intel president.

The deal, which was announced on Wednesday, comes at a time when Softbank increases its investment in the infrastructure needed to operate artificial intelligence, which the founder Masayoshi Son climbed as the latest bet on a transformative technology.

It follows a series of investments worth billions of dollars announced in recent months, including the ChatGPT Openai operator, the Stargate Project for Building the AI ​​Data Infrastructure in the United States and Crystal, a joint venture with Openai to develop artificial intelligence services in Japan for corporate customers.

Ampre makes the CPU CPU chips based on the computing structure of the major arm of the Softbank, which are used by companies like Oracle in the cloud computing infrastructure.

As part of the deal, the largest investor of Ambry, Oracle and Carliel will sell their positions in the company, Softbank said.

Sun said in a statement that the future of “artificial intelligence” would require a computing force.

“The experience of ampar in semiconductor and high -performance computing will help accelerate this vision, and deepen our commitment to creating artificial intelligence in the United States,” he said.

Ampre was founded in 2018 by INTEL RENEEEES, by building CPU with its custom Corping Core technology, a step that is usually taken by only much larger companies such as Apple or Qualcomm.

The ARM eventually became a competitor as it sought to work directly with customers like Microsoft and Google to help them build their arm -based central treatment units.

Google adopted the amper chips, but after a year after Google worked with ARM to develop her AXON CPU, Google Credit official told Reuters that he would not publish more ampere chips.

Under SoftBank ownership, Ampre will be a stable companion of ARM in the growing Japanese companies group of chips technology companies that enhance their focus on artificial intelligence.

Ibn Softbank established his name and his wealth on high condemnation bets on new technologies, such as e -commerce and the Internet via mobile phone, but his invasion to artificial intelligence came at a time of the higher assessments in the sky and his investment record is incomplete.

WeWork joint company entered the office management after Softbank has poured billions of dollars in it, while the value of the portfolio of the technological start -up companies retained by investment vehicles in the Japanese Vision Fund has decreased since 2022.

(Stephen Nelis reports in Santa Clara, California, Anton Bridge in Tokyo and Harchita Minacti in Bangaluru; edited by Alan Barona and Jimmy Farid)