NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s message to Cambridge about his plans for Arm
The chief executive and founder of NVIDIA writes for the Cambridge Independent following the announcement that his company is set to acquire Cambridge-based chip designer Arm from Softbank for $40bn.
The company I founded, NVIDIA, recently announced plans to acquire Arm. The deal is important to many of your readers, so I want to introduce myself, my company, and our plans for Arm and for Cambridge – a city for which I have great admiration.
Arm’s technology is of global importance. It is the world leader in highly efficient central processing units, or CPUs. Arm products are licensed around the world, and most likely power the smartphone in your pocket. I recognize that Arm is also a hugely important part of Cambridge’s business and innovation ecosystem.
My vision is of investing in Arm as we create the world’s premier company for the age of AI, and of building a long-term partnership with Cambridge. Your city will become our European home, where I look forward to spending significant time.
Arm will remain, as it is today, based in Cambridge, its intellectual property registered in the UK, employing some of the world’s greatest minds. We will establish a world-class AI research and education centre here in Cambridge, and build an AI supercomputer to fuel ground-breaking research. We will keep sacred Arm’s open licensing model, and use it to bring more innovations to more people, more quickly. We will invest in Arm’s partnerships with its customers and its network of outstanding developers.
NVIDIA may not be a household name, but we are one of the world’s largest, fastest growing companies.
I founded NVIDIA in 1993 with two friends, with the same ambition that drives Arm - to create incredible technology that can benefit the world. We have since grown into a multinational business with more than 18,000 employees, a market value of over $300 billion and are recognized as one of America’s best places to work. We invented computer chips called graphics processing units, or GPUs. Originally focused on computer graphics, NVIDIA has evolved into a world leader in AI.
Today, we are on the threshold of a remarkable new technological age. AI will accelerate solutions to our most important challenges – from COVID-19 to safer cars – and it brings an unprecedented opportunity for Arm and NVIDIA.
Like Arm, NVIDIA is an engineering company at heart, heavily focused on research and development. In addition to a spirit of invention, R&D requires three ingredients: great talent, the right technical tools, and significant investment.
In Cambridge, you have the first in abundance: amazingly talented engineers. We are dedicated to keeping these brilliant people at Arm, and we want to add to their ranks.
NVIDIA will provide the second ingredient. Core to our plan is constructing a world-leading AI research centre in Cambridge, powered by a combination of NVIDIA and Arm hardware.
We also intend to invest heavily to turn our vision into reality. Our intent is to grow Arm and its ecosystem dramatically.
It is my dream that together we will help produce the next generation of Turings and Newtons, and enable brilliant minds from around the world to achieve their life’s work in the UK.
I have already been in touch with the University of Cambridge, to begin discussing how we can work together to ensure students and researchers benefit from our investment. We look forward to working with local technology businesses in the Cambridge area too. If you feel access to our planned technology centre will benefit your development, we want to hear from you.
I am truly excited for our partnership to begin.
Yours sincerely,
Jensen Huang
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