SoftBank is reportedly close to buying Ampere The $6.5 billion deal could shake up AI and data centers There are questions about how it affects Arm’s neutrality and SoftBank’s long-term strategy SoftBank, the Japanese owner of Arm, is close to acquiring Ampere Computing, a company that develops data center chips based on Arm's architecture. In January 2025, BNN Bloomberg reported SoftBank was exploring a purchase of Ampere, which is backed by Oracle and private equity firm Carlyle Group, in a move widely seen as part of Softbank’s bid to challenge AMD and Intel’s dominance in the AI and data center...