M&A: Week 13
In this week's M&A review
- Softbank to acquire Ampere Computing in US$ 6.5 billion deal
- Google to acquire Wiz - the company's most expensive deal to date
Softbank to acquire Ampere Computing in
US$ 6.5 billion deal
Ampere Computing will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank Group and retain its name. The deal is expected to be closed in the latter half of 2025.
Ampere Computing is engaged in developing high-performance, energy-efficient processors tailored for cloud computing and AI workloads. The company currently employs around 1000 engineers. Ampere Computing was founded in 2018 with an initial focus on cloud-native computing.
The acquisition will help enhance SoftBank Group’s capabilities in key areas and accelerate its growth initiatives. It also aims to broaden SoftBank Group AI infrastructure investments in ventures such as Cristal intelligence and Stargate.
Softbank with acquire 100% ownership, and as part of the deal Ampere’s biggest investors, Carlyle Group and Oracle, will divest their respective stakes in the company to SoftBank. Currently, Carlyle Partners VI Denver owns a 59.65% stake in Ampere Computing while Oracle Project Denver owns 32.27% interest. Arm Technology Investment Limited, an affiliate of Arm, holds 8.08% stake in Ampere. SBG holds majority stake in Arm.
“The future of Artificial Super Intelligence requires breakthrough computing power. Ampere’s expertise in semiconductors and high-performance computing will help accelerate this vision, and deepens our commitment to AI innovation in the United States.”
Masayoshi Son, Chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp.
Some industry analysts believe this acquisition is aimed at supporting OpenAI's Stargate initiative.
"SoftBank already owns Arm, which could easily make a server CPU chip for OpenAI to use as a host for its AI systems. SoftBank already owns AI accelerator and system maker Graphcore, which it bought in July 2024. Buying Ampere Computing would seem to be redundant, despite the fact that the company, founded by server chip experts from Intel, Applied Micro, and others, has a roadmap to get to 512-cores in a socket and to add local AI processing in the CPU package with its “Aurora” AmpereOne A3 processor, expected sometime next year."
Ampere's patent portfolio has 74 patents families, 170 application patents and 76 granted patents. these patent families have received granted patents.
Ampere appears to have a healthy "innovation pipeline." About 50% of their patent applications have been filed within the last 5 years, and are clearly on an upward trend.
The company has patents in the portfolio that have a priority date before the company was founded. This could be for several reasons:
- The company had a different origin story
- The company acquired a company with patents that were filed earlier
- The company licenced patents from another company or companies
The companies listed on these early patents are Applied Micro Circuits, and Macom Connectivity Solutions.
Publicly available sources indicate Ampere Computing was founded in the Fall of 2017 by Renée James, ex-President of Intel, with funding from The Carlyle Group. Here is states that James acquired a team from MACOM Technology Solutions (formerly AppliedMicro) in addition to several industry hires to start the company.
A final look Ampere's patent activity also reveals something worth noting. Through its acquisition of OnSpecta in July 2021, Ampere gained several software-focused AI patents:
- Microkernel-Based Software Optimization of Neural Networks
- Multiformat Data Generation for Neural Network
- End-to-End Optimization
These filings suggest a planned expansion beyond hardware design into the performance layer of AI interference. While small in volume, they hint at Ampere's intent to own not just the processor - but the entire AI workload. That, in turn, may explain why Softbank sees Ampere as a valuable ;piece of its long-term, AI infrastructure strategy.
Google to acquire Wiz - the company's most expensive deal to date
Google announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Wiz, Inc., a leading cloud security platform headquartered in New York, for US$ 32 billion, in an all-cash transaction. Once closed, Wiz will join Google Cloud.
Google said this acquisition represents an investment by Google Cloud to accelerate two large and growing trends in the AI era: improved cloud security and the ability to use multiple clouds (multi-cloud).
Industry analysts are of the view Google’s deal to acquire Wiz has been to shrink the gap with Amazon and Microsoft’s ever-growing cloud computing businesses.
Since the company's inception, in January 2020, they have followed a very proactive approach to protecting their intellectual property - this can be seen in the rapid growth in the patent portfolio. Currently, their patent portfolio consists of 57 patent families, 71 application patents, and 24 granted patents (as of Jun 2024). The bulk of their portfolio has been filed with the US patent office. International protection is progressing, and they have filed 17 WO applications, with Canada the first country with an active application.
Wiz has an increase number of applications being filed since 2020 - an indication of a healthy "innovation pipeline". The recency of their patent applications affords the company with many years of IP protection.
Examination of Wiz's patent portfolio clearly demonstrates cloud security is a core component for the business.
- detecting vulnerabilities in configuration code of a cloud environment utilizing infrastructure as code
- system and method for analyzing network objects in a cloud environment
- techniques for multi-tenant vulnerability scanning
- static analysis techniques for determining reachability properties of network and computing objects
As Google seeks to close the gap with AWS and Microsoft, Wiz offers not just strong cloud security tech, but a growing patent portfolio that could support broader platform differentiation in the years to come.
Sources:
SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing : https://group.softbank/en/news/press/20250320
Why Did SoftBank Just Buy Ampere Computing?:
https://www.nextplatform.com/2025/03/21/why-did-softbank-just-buy-ampere-computing/
Wikipedia - Ampere Computing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampere_Computing
TheNextPlatform: Offers in-depth coverage of high-end computing at large enterprises, supercomputing centers, hyperscale data centers, and public clouds
Ampere Computing: https://amperecomputing.com/
Google announces agreement to acquire Wiz: https://blog.google/inside-google/company-announcements/google-agreement-acquire-wiz/