The CMA (Competition & Markets Authority) has been investigating whether the deal is anti-competitive. In August, it declared the deal does indeed raise “serious competition concerns”.

Arm founder Hermann Hauser went further and suggested the merger would amount to “surrendering the UK’s most powerful trade weapon to the US”.

Among the concerns are that Nvidia could limit competitors’ access to key technologies. The CMA claims to have received “a substantial number” of concerns from rivals and some have even offered to invest in Arm if it helps the company to remain independent.

Dorries has ‘quasi-judicial’ powers under the Enterprise Act 2002 to intervene in mergers on public interest grounds.

As part of its ‘Phase One’ report, the CMA determined the merger has the possibility of a “substantial lessening of competition across four key markets”. Those markets are data centres, Internet of Things, the automotive sector, and gaming.

Beyond the impact on competition, evidence provided from departments across government have also led the Secretary of State to deem that national security could be harmed from the merger and warrants further investigation.

“I have carefully considered the Competition and Market Authority’s ‘Phase One’ report into NVIDIA’s proposed takeover of Arm and have decided to ask them to undertake a further in-depth ‘Phase Two’ investigation,” commented Dorries.

“Arm has a unique place in the global technology supply chain and we must make sure the implications of this transaction are fully considered. The CMA will now report to me on competition and national security grounds and provide advice on the next steps.”

The CMA now has 24 weeks to conduct Phase Two of its investigation, although this could be extended by eight weeks if necessary. Upon receiving the report, the Digital Secretary could take action to remedy any adverse effects to the public interest or refer it back to the CMA.

David Bicknell, Principal Analyst, and Dr Lil Read, Analyst, on the Thematic Research Team at GlobalData, commented:

“This latest government probe is another nail in the coffin for the proposed merger between Nvidia and Arm. With proceedings likely to extend into late 2022 at the earliest, Nvidia should just abandon the deal and focus on its future away from Arm.

Ordering a security review signals that the UK government doesn’t want this bid to succeed. Couple this with an already underway EU investigation and the further prospect of a China referral, and Nvidia faces some tough questions. It is unlikely it will want the continued uncertainty of a bid that is going nowhere.

We think it is time for Nvidia to move on, and for Softbank to return Arm to where it found it—the stock market.

Nvidia’s future beyond Arm extends into the metaverse, a virtual world where users share experiences and interact in real-time within simulated scenarios. Nvidia is already targeting the metaverse as a key pillar of its future – a wise decision as GlobalData believes it will be the next big technology megatheme.”

Nvidia, for its part, has promised to work with UK regulators to alleviate concerns. The company has already pledged to keep Arm in the UK and hire more staff.

The company’s announcement of a new AI centre in Cambridge last year – which features an Arm/Nvidia-based supercomputer, set to be one of the most powerful in the world – was expected to be part of a bid to show UK regulators of the firm’s commitment to the country.

“Arm is an incredible company and it employs some of the greatest engineering minds in the world,” said Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia. “But we believe we can make Arm even more incredible and take it to even higher levels.”

“We want to propel it – and the UK – to global AI leadership.”

(Image Credit: UK Parliament under CC BY 3.0 license)

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Research from GlobalData has found that – of the 45 international AI unicorns identified – China has the largest share with 19 based in the country.

Priya Toppo, Analyst of Thematic Research at GlobalData, comments:

“China is a leading player in AI, with a number of established companies such as Baidu, Hikvision, iFlytek, Tencent, and Alibaba.

The country also has a strong AI startup ecosystem, which is evident from the large number of AI unicorns (privately held startup valued at  $1bn or more).” 

Collectively, the Chinese AI unicorns are valued at $43.5 billion.

Beijing has been on a regulatory crackdown in recent months, especially on Chinese companies doing business in, and with, the US.

Robotaxi firm Didi, for example, was targeted by Chinese authorities following its $4.4 billion listing on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Chinese regulators forced Apple to remove Didi from the App Store while other app stores operating in China have also been ordered not to serve Didi’s app.

Despite the crackdowns, AI development in China has remained strong.

Ms Toppa added: “Chinese AI companies have faced several regulatory challenges but have emerged even stronger. The companies are well placed in key themes such as computer vision, deep learning technologies, smart cities, and autonomous vehicles.” 

SenseTime remains China’s biggest AI unicorn with a $12 billion valuation and total funding to date of $2.6 billion. This is followed by CloudWalk’s $3.3 billion valuation and $500 million total funding so far.

CloudWalk recently led in a facial recognition test conducted by the US government’s National Institute of Standards and Technology. However, CloudWalk has faced serious allegations including from US officials who declared the firm was “complicit in human rights violations and abuses committed in China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, forced labour and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, ethnic Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region”.

Other notable Chinese AI unicorns identified in GlobalData’s research include Horizon Robotics with a valuation of $5 billion, Megvii with a valuation of $4 billion, and Yitu Technology with a valuation of $2.2 billion.

“The Chinese AI ecosystem will become even stronger as leading companies go public and are able to invest the significant amounts of new capital raised,” Ms Toppo concludes.

China’s growing dominance in AI has some international competitors worried they’ll be unable to keep pace.

Nicolas Chaillan, the Pentagon’s former chief software officer, recently resigned in protest after claiming the US has “no competing fighting chance against China in 15 to 20 years” when it comes to AI and cyberwarfare.

Chaillan says that China is set to dominate the future of the world, controlling everything from media narratives to geopolitics.

Part of the problem, Chaillan believes, is the reluctance of US companies such as Google to work with the government on AI due to ethical debates over the technology. In contrast, Chinese firms are obligated to work with their government and have little regard for ethics.

(Photo by James Lee on Unsplash)

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70 percent of the 2,341 respondents across 30 business sectors picked AR as disrupting their industry most out of a selection of seven emerging technologies: AI, cybersecurity, cloud computing, IoT, blockchain, and 5G.

Filipe Oliveira, Senior Analyst at GlobalData, commented: “This change in how people see AR will likely be long term, and not just a temporary blip. It is clear that people are warming towards the technology, even if they don’t believe that it will make a big difference tomorrow.” 

AI wins some ground back when it comes to confidence in the technology. 57 percent of the respondents believe that AI will live up to all of its promises compared to just 26 percent for AR.

Along those same lines, 31 percent believe “The technology is hyped, but I can see a use for it” for AI, while a huge 50 percent report the same for AR.

Apple’s decision to add a LiDAR sensor to its latest mobile devices was seen as an important step towards the mass adoption of AR. Excitement is also growing around so-called “metaverses” that converge virtually-enhanced physical reality with physically-persistent shared virtual spaces.

SenseTime, one of China’s leading AI companies, announced earlier this week that it had partnered with BilibiliWorld to create a metaverse. The experience leverages SenseTime’s AI and mixed reality technologies to enable players to enjoy role-playing games that seamlessly blend reality with virtuality.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg recently said the company “will effectively transition from people seeing us as primarily being a social media company to being a metaverse company”. As the owner of Oculus, Zuckerberg’s plans for the future of Facebook will likely make people think of a large virtual space similar to that depicted in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One novel and the 2018 film adaptation.

Some people have expressed concern about a large centralised company such as Facebook having control over such a potentially ubiquitous world and the content they consume. Many believe that an open-source decentralised version is vital:

Zuckerberg, for his part, claims that no one company will run the metaverse and it will be an “embodied internet” that is operated by many different players.

Decentraland is an early example of what a truly decentralised virtual space could look like. The platform makes use of a DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) to make policy decisions such as what content is allowed in addition to taking advantage of the NFT (Non-Fungible Token) trend to offer exclusive in-world items.

AR and AI are both important emerging technologies that can often go hand-in-hand, but it’s clear that the latter is losing its perspective among professionals as having the biggest impact on their industries over the coming years.

(Photo by My name is Yanick on Unsplash)

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