SoftBank Group Corp. and Arm Holdings plc may acquire chipmaker Ampere Computing LLC, Reuters reported on Wednesday.

It’s unclear what price the company might fetch. Two years ago, SoftBank reportedly considered buying a stake in Ampere at a $8 billion valuation. It earlier expressed interest in acquiring the chipmaker outright. 

SoftBank became a major chip industry player in 2016 when it paid $32 billion to buy Arm. It took the chip designer public in 2023 but retains a majority stake. UK-based Arm sells popular processor designs that underpin most handsets, connected devices and a growing number of data center systems.

Ampere develops a line of server processors based on Arm’s instruction set architecture. Its newest chip, the AmpereOne M, started shipping last month. The processor features up to 192 cores and higher memory bandwidth than its predecessors, which enables applications to move data to and from RAM faster. 

Last July, Ampere previewed an upcoming processor called Aurora. It features up to 512 cores, or more than twice as many AmpereOne M, and includes a dedicated artificial intelligence module. It will also ship with HBM memory, a type of high-speed RAM that is widely used in AI chips.

Rumors that Ampere is exploring a sale first emerged in September. At the time, Bloomberg reported that the company had hired a financial advisor to help it weigh its options. 

Today’s report cautioned that the acquisition talks with SoftBank and Arm may not lead to a deal. Additionally, it’s possible Ampere could accept a takeover offer from a different bidder. When rumors of the potential sale emerged in September, Bloomberg’s sources said that the chipmaker could also opt to remain independent.

The report that SoftBank may buy the company comes less than a year after it acquired another chip startup. In July, the company inked a deal to purchase Graphcore Ltd., a UK-based developer of AI processors. The chipmaker raised more than $760 million in funding prior to the acquisition.

Graphcore offers an AI processor called the Bow IP that is based on wafer-on-wafer technology. It comprises two vertically-stacked layers: one that contains logic circuits and another equipped with capacitors, components designed to hold an electric charge. The capacitors deliver this electricity to the logic circuits in order to boost their performance.

If an acquisition materializes, SoftBank might encourage Ampere to launch a go-to-market partnership with Graphcore. AI servers include not only machine learning accelerators but also a central processing unit that coordinates those accelerators. SoftBank could enter the market with a server that combines Graphcore’s Bow IPUs and Ampere CPUs.

At one point, the conglomerate considered partnering with Intel Corp. to take on Nvidia Corp. in the AI server market. SoftBank reportedly also hopes to provide software for those servers and play a role in supplying the power they use to run AI models.

Image: Ampere