British chip designer ARM Holdings PLC yesterday said it is to obtain extra funding from Softbank Group Corp next year as it continues to seek more merger and acquisition opportunities, and to develop new technologies.
“I think the only thing you can expect next year is that we are going to be given more opportunities to spend money,” ARM worldwide marketing and strategic alliance vice president Ian Ferguson told a news conference in Taipei.
Japan’s Softbank bought ARM Holdings in a ¥24 billion (US$29.9 billion) deal that closed in early September.
With the additional capital, the British company has more leeway to increase its number of engineers to bring the new processors it develops to the market, Ferguson said.
ARM plans to invest more on its software ecosystem and hire more developers to roll out new applications, he said.
“We now are investing people to get [a] robot operating system running well on ARM [processors]. That is exactly something we probably will not get done without extra funding from Softbank,” Ferguson said.
The company is also looking at merger and acquisition opportunities as the market evolves, he added.
ARM in May acquired Apical Ltd for US$350 million in a deal that is expected to help it develop new imaging products for next-generation vehicles, security systems, robotics and other smart applications.
Ferguson did not comment on a report that Foxconn Technology Group (富士康科技集團), known as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co (鴻海精密) in Taiwan, is mulling a collaboration with ARM to set up a chip design center in Shenzhen, China.
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