Nvidia faces backlash over commitment to Arm’s UK headquarters

US chipmaker criticised for failing to make legally binding pledge to retain Cambridge headquarters

Nvidia faced a political backlash on Monday in the UK as critics questioned the strength of the US chipmaker’s pledge to keep the headquarters of Arm Holdings in Cambridge.

Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, said he intended to retain Arm’s name while also expanding its base in Cambridge and keeping its intellectual property registered in the UK.

“Arm will remain headquartered in Cambridge,” he said, adding that the company would also build a new global centre of excellence in AI research in the city.

But those pledges do not amount to legally binding assurances enforceable by the Takeover Panel.

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Asked by the Financial Times how long Arm would retain its Cambridge HQ, Mr Huang declined to provide a definitive timeframe. “For as long as Arm employees want to work in the UK,” he said.

Mr Huang said it was unlikely the company would be able to “replicate the pool of computer scientists” based at Arm in Cambridge anywhere else.

Downing Street said ministers would “take appropriate action” if necessary. “The deal was announced early this morning and we will be scrutinising it in close detail including what it means for the Cambridge headquarters.”

Oliver Dowden, culture secretary, is considering whether to announce a “call in” under which the Competition and Markets Authority would review the transaction.

Ed Miliband, shadow business secretary, said the government needed to extract gold-plated promises from Nvidia as soon as possible that would be enforceable by the Takeover Panel.

“This is absolutely vital to ensure those promises have weight and — critically — they must not be time-restricted,” he said. “If the government has failed to extract those legally binding assurances it will be a real dereliction of duty that calls into question their commitment to an effective industrial strategy.”

Tom Tugendhat, head of the foreign affairs select committee, said control of technology was an essential element of independence: “The sale of Arm raises questions of sovereignty,” he said.

When Arm Holdings was bought by Japanese giant SoftBank in 2016, it made legally-binding assurances that it would keep the Cambridge headquarters and double the company’s UK workforce over five years.

I will hire every world-class researcher in AI we can findJensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia

Nvidia said it was committed to satisfying those undertakings — which are scheduled to complete in September 2021.

Mr Huang dismissed the idea that this could be the point at which the Arm headquarters might be shifted to California, where Nvidia is based.

“We will expand on this great [Cambridge] site and build a world-class AI research facility, supporting developments in healthcare, life sciences, robotics, self-driving cars and other fields,” the chief executive said.

“And, to attract researchers and scientists from the UK and around the world to conduct groundbreaking work, Nvidia will build a state of the art AI supercomputer, powered by Arm CPUs. Arm Cambridge will be a world-class technology centre.”

Asked how many people could be hired by the new AI centre, Mr Huang said: “I doubt the UK will publish a headline that 1,000 jobs were created but I bet that in a year’s time we are going to talk about investment gone there and how the UK has become a centre of excellence in AI . . . I will hire every world-class researcher in AI we can find.”

One person close to Nvidia said the Arm headquarters would not be moving anywhere else: “Cambridge will be a massive winner from this,” he insisted.