Ampere, a semiconductor company started by former Intel executive Renee James, is about to sell itself to SoftBank. This is the most recent development in a long-running dispute over who would eventually own the business.
According to Bloomberg, the deal might be worth roughly $6.5 billion for Ampere. That is less than the $8 billion asking price in 2021 when SoftBank was negotiating to acquire a minority stake.
Since SoftBank owns the majority of chip creator ARM Holdings, Ampere is a suitable fit for designing ARM chips for the data center. Ampere remained silent.
After leaving a 28-year career at Intel after being passed up for the CEO position, James founded Ampere in 2017. She had been employed by private equity as a dealmaker.
She proposed to buy it from Carlyle and Oracle after James learned that chipmaker Macom planned to sell a portion of its chip business. They both agreed to assist her in financing the purchase.
She was one of only two women in charge of a semiconductor company when she started Ampere. Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD, is the other.
James came up with an innovative idea for its time: using low-energy ARM architectures to create data center processors. Along with other major cloud providers like Microsoft, Oracle also grew to be a significant customer.
Oracle stated in the same filing that James would be stepping down from the board in mid-November when her term ended. Since 2015, James has served on the Oracle board.
We don’t know because Ampere is a private corporation.
The agreement with SoftBank is not complete, though, and the business has reportedly been looking for a sale since September. Bloomberg was informed by sources that the deal may not go at all or that the terms may change.
