Nvidia close to acquiring Arm from SoftBank for more than $40B, says WSJ

What's unclear is how regulators around the world would view the deal.

SoftBank will reportedly sell Arm to Nvidia in a deal valued at more than $40 billion in a transaction that will create a chip behemoth.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Nvidia would buy Arm with cash and stock. SoftBank bought Arm for $32 billion in a deal that was aimed at Internet of things, 5G and licensing the technology that powers the mobile industry.

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Nvidia and Arm have been in exclusive talks with a deal done early next week, reported the Journal. Talks between the two companies were reported in July by the Financial Times and Bloomberg. The value of Arm has gone up since that first report, which valued a deal at more than $32 billion.

What's unclear is how regulators around the world would view the deal. Nvidia is a graphics processor powerhouse and has moved into data centers and workloads for cloud and artificial intelligence. Arm has been an arms dealer for processor intellectual property and Softbank as an owner was able to keep that neutrality.

With Arm owned by Nvidia regulators are likely to question how it would deal with rivals ranging from AMD to Qualcomm.

Nevertheless, chip makers are bulking up. Maxim bought Analog Devices.