Intel survives as Nvidia calls off the acquisition plan with Arm.

SoftBank and Nvidia have announced their decision to call off efforts to acquire UK-based computing technology company Arm. The deal came to an unfruitful end following lingering scrutiny that has followed the deal since it was conceived.

Arm said it is now exploring a public offering in lieu of the acquisition, pushing for an IPO to happen in the next 12 months.

In December, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), filed a lawsuit to halt the acquisition following a barrage of petitions from players in the industry. The argument has been that the deal will hurt market competition.

When this deal was announced, I wrote: “Intel has been disintermediated by TSMC with its legendary manufacturing moat dismantled by the global contract chip manufacturer. The implication is that the castle which Intel has protected for decades is largely vulnerable now.

“Nvidia does not build big foundries but focuses on R&D designs while its manufacturing partners make the chips. It is a leader in modern chips for datacenters, gaming, AI and more. If ARM goes to Nvidia, it will pick a huge part of the mobile sector, and if that happens, Intel will bleed for years.”

The biggest winner here is Intel because if Nvidia had been armed by Arm, it would have been an asymmetric attack on Intel. Arm is the hardware operating system for the mobile world, and housing it within Nvidia would have dislocated everything in our modern world. From Microsoft to Sony to Samsung to Tecno to …., Arm has been powering the age of mobile internet. That Arm remains unbounded is the right thing!

Focus on the job done and not papers. If HND does the same job as BSC, pay should be the same. Forget JAMB or title of degree or school. In Microsoft Nigeria, one of their Lead Scientists did not attend any university/poly in Nigeria when Microsoft hired him. This guy is so good that they have relocated him to London out of Lagos. It would be pure wickedness if you still want to pay him WAEC grade.

===press release

SANTA CLARA, Calif., and TOKYO – Feb. 7, 2022 – NVIDIA and SoftBank Group Corp. (“SBG” or “SoftBank”) today announced the termination of the previously announced transaction whereby NVIDIA would acquire Arm Limited (“Arm”) from SBG. The parties agreed to terminate the Agreement because of significant regulatory challenges preventing the consummation of the transaction, despite good faith efforts by the parties. Arm will now start preparations for a public offering.

“Arm has a bright future, and we’ll continue to support them as a proud licensee for decades to come,” said Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive officer of NVIDIA. “Arm is at the center of the important dynamics in computing. Though we won’t be one company, we will partner closely with Arm. The significant investments that Masa has made have positioned Arm to expand the reach of the Arm CPU beyond client computing to supercomputing, cloud, AI and robotics. I expect Arm to be the most important CPU architecture of the next decade.”

SBG today also announced that, in coordination with Arm, it will start preparations for a public offering of Arm within the fiscal year ending March 31, 2023. SBG believes Arm’s technology and intellectual property will continue to be at the center of mobile computing and the development of artificial intelligence.

“Arm is becoming a center of innovation not only in the mobile phone revolution, but also in cloud computing, automotive, the Internet of Things and the metaverse, and has entered its second growth phase,” said Masayoshi Son, Representative Director, Corporate Officer, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of SoftBank Group Corp. “We will take this opportunity and start preparing to take Arm public, and to make even further progress.”

Mr. Son continued, “I want to thank Jensen and his talented team at NVIDIA for trying to bring together these two great companies and wish them all the success.”

NVIDIA and SBG had announced that they had entered into a definitive agreement, under which NVIDIA would acquire Arm from SoftBank, on September 13, 2020. In accordance with the terms of the agreement, SBG* will retain the $1.25 billion prepaid by NVIDIA, which will be recorded as profit in the fourth quarter, and NVIDIA will retain its 20-year Arm license.

• 24.99% of Arm shares are attributable to SoftBank Vision Fund 1.

The National Universities Commission (NUC) has informed necessary government agencies that two new universities have been created in Lagos state. The schools are Lagos State University of Science and Technology (LASUST) Ikorodu, and Lagos State University of Education (LASUED) Ijanikin.

LASUST came from Lagos State Polytechnic (LASPOTECH) while  LASUED was a concatenation of Adeniran Ogunsanya College of Education (AOCOED) Ijanikin, and Michael Otedola College of Primary Education (MOCPED) Epe.

Did you notice something? Lagos State has weaned itself off colleges of education and polytechnics,  thereby fixing the national paralysis where polytechnic graduates are treated unfairly. This is a very bold call by Governor Sanwo-Olu and one I support 100%.

If Nigeria cannot fix this HND-BSc  dichotomy, the best option is to phase out polytechnics and colleges of education. Lagos State has drawn the first blood, I expect other states to follow. Just like that, we will be out of HND-awarding polytechnics even though the OND levels remain fair.

Simply, there is no need preparing young people only to frustrate their careers because of papers their nation gave them. If HND cannot equal BSc, close all polytechnics or better, convert them to universities! The Americans have translated Nigeria HND qualifications as full degree equivalents even when the nation which awards them does not offer the same blessing.

So, with the Lagos state government phasing out the whole distraction, it is either the National Assembly fixes it or everyone follows the same path. Yes, more universities, no matter the quality. But it is all good as everyone comes with the same paper and can compete from the same starting point.

I experienced this unfairness as a young banker in Lagos. I was put to manage more than 53 people, merely HND and OND graduates. Some of the people I was to supervise had been in the bank before I wrote JAMB. Yet, I was the boss, even though they were teaching me the job! I earned multiples more than them. And I felt that it was simply not fair. Nigeria has to change that and Governor Sanwo-Olu is leading therein.

Mr Sanwo-Olu said converting LASPOTECH to University of Science and Technology will bring about innovative engineering, science invention and other innovations that are critical to the development of the country and the state.

He said the two additional universities will assist in meeting the demands and needs of teeming youths.

“It is about the future of our citizens. It is about the future of our youths, who truly believe in us to do the right thing. It is about our commitment to taking tertiary education to a level that all of us would be proud of. It is all around ensuring that we give hope and opportunity to our teeming youths that believe in us to do the right thing.

“We are giving a commitment that what we have done in LASU, we will also replicate it in the two universities. We will ensure that the two great children that we are giving birth to today are not left alone. All of the various development infrastructure; human and materials that are required to make the universities one of the best in the country, Lagos State would make those resources available for them.

“We say this with every sense of responsibility, knowing fully-well what we are doing in LASU, the level of infrastructure we are putting into erstwhile polytechnic and colleges of education, we would double up those efforts at ensuring that they can turn into great citadels of higher learning and universities that would be reference points in the years ahead.”

If there is one thing you can easily pick out from all the #iamaprofessional posts on LinkedIn in the past week, it is that professionalism differs from one industry to another. As an entrepreneur who has started and run businesses across different industries, I can attest that what is professional in one industry, might not be for the next one.

The first business I ever ran was in the tech space, and as we can attest, there are no strict rules to professional looks in tech. What we see these days is that the ‘techie’ is more associated with jeans and T-shirts. As an engineer, Jeans had always been a part of my dressing as it is what we use in site visits. With this background, I did not have any problems with my dressing.

However, when I moved on to the second business (which was in the finance space), I encountered a different orientation. This was an industry that was big on dressing, precisely black suits, white shirts, ties, and the likes. The first presentation I made to clients was a washout, not because I was not adequately prepared, but because the clients took one look at my dressing and tagged me ‘unserious’. I had put in all the time to prepare a power pitch, did all the research for my proposal but ended up walking into a room where I was the only person who failed to put on a suit.

Professionalism is fair, not just to you, but to others in the space, and their perception. If a certain way of dressing would make people uncomfortable doing business with you, you may have to make some adjustments. That is what professionalism is to me, and I think when I realized that professionalism was going to differ from one industry to another, that was the point I became a professional entrepreneur.

Thanks to LinkedIn, I can simply go find out what the standard is from the best people in any industry. From the contents they post to the way they engage, I can access all of that on LinkedIn. A professional entrepreneur will blend into any sector he gets into, and become a professional.

They said that software will “eat” the world but I will add that before that can happen, hardware will “cook” the world. The news that Nigeria’s Reliance has raised $40 million could come as a surprise to many, but for those in the health tech domain, it is expected.

Here is the deal: the health sector offers many promises in Africa. But capturing that value cannot just happen by delivering new digital technologies. In other words, digital tech has severe limitations if they do not have platforms to operate in the health sector.

Those platforms are many and the most important among them is health insurance. The fact is this: it is very hard to make money from someone who does not have money. The reason why healthtech is doing well in the advanced economies is because insurance makes it possible to pay the innovators pioneering new domains. Africa, unfortunately, has not been lucky in that space.

So, if you want to win this market with technology, you need to think how you can make it easier for people to afford whatever you bring. Reliance is addressing these two concerns with new technologies and a novel insurance model. Combining both, it reduces costs via technology-anchored productivity, while making it easier for people to afford whatever it is offering via health insurance plans.

Having raised $40 million, I think that it should be one of the most valued health insurance ecosystem players in Nigeria since you will expect the valuation to be north of $100 million and few insurance companies in Nigeria are in that league.

Reliance Health operates business-to-business and business-to-customers models. Reliance HMO is the company’s health insurance plan for both sets of customers where individuals can select monthly, quarterly or yearly health plans ranging from ?3,500 (~$7.00) to ?148,500 (~$297.00). On the other hand, businesses can make subscriptions on behalf of their employees, which Kuti said are slightly cheaper than plans used by retail customers.

Over 200,000 individuals in total from both models use Reliance Health. But the platform has seen the most stickiness with its business customers. The platform serves 600 of them, including Biersdorf Nivea, Jumia and PwC, while maintaining an attributable intention rate of 99%, said Kuti.

This is a pure double play strategy and the company has captured value by powering its digital solutions with affordable health insurance plans: “Double play posits that firms mix market positioning of products to maximize strategic competitiveness: A company could be delivering service in one sector while capturing value in another. And most times, what is helping the firm to thrive goes beyond what many people associate with it.”