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Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

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Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#61

Post by [deleted] »

de_watcher wrote: post #21
rvz wrote: post #15

The UK is actually the one that has ignored and destroyed ARM (and Imagination Technologies) and it has been compared to 'selling off the crown jewels' [0] to SoftBank which was welcomed by a UK government cabinet minister in 2016 as a 'big vote of confidence in British business.' [1] Actually, SoftBank got ARM at a special Brexit discount. For them, they saw it as the best deal of 2016 and for the UK, you might as w…

You say "no 10x return", "reselling for tiny profit" and then "UK didn't care and didn't know what they had". What do you mean by that?

[deleted]

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#62

Post by almost_usual »

de_watcher wrote: post #21
rvz wrote: post #15

The UK is actually the one that has ignored and destroyed ARM (and Imagination Technologies) and it has been compared to 'selling off the crown jewels' [0] to SoftBank which was welcomed by a UK government cabinet minister in 2016 as a 'big vote of confidence in British business.' [1] Actually, SoftBank got ARM at a special Brexit discount. For them, they saw it as the best deal of 2016 and for the UK, you might as w…

You say "no 10x return", "reselling for tiny profit" and then "UK didn't care and didn't know what they had". What do you mean by that?

You’re comparing ARM pre SoftBank and post SoftBank. SoftBank has burnt a ridiculous amount of money and turns companies into money burning machines.

I’m sure WeWork imploding and other portfolio businesses not meeting expectations are also influencing the sale.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#63

Post by adventured »

ArkVark wrote: post #48
tcldr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attended a talk in the UK at Google Campus in London by Eric Schmidt. At the end of the talk there was some Q&A and one very apparently angry and frustrated member of the audience asked something along the lines of 'Do you think it's fair for Google and other big American Tech firms to keep buying up innovative and valuable British and European companies!?' Eric Schmidt immediately replied 'Well if you don't want u…

Extreme wealth is not valued in Europe. To the contrary, income (even upper-middle class income) and consumption is incredibly highly taxed. Many small and mid-sized business struggle or refuse to scale because it exposes them, their owners and management to taxes which cannot be escaped (by contrast small businesses can pay their staff in cash, and charge personal expenses to business accounts for VAT writeoffs). Al…

> Extreme wealth is not valued in Europe.

I think that's too much of a blanket statement. France (the second or third largest economy in Europe depending on the year) is a potent counter argument to that premise.

Bernard Arnault, $89 billion. Francoise Bettencourt Meyers, $66 billion. Francois Pinault, $42 billion. Alain Wertheimer, $32 billion. Gerard Wertheimer, $32 billion.

Those are immense dynastic fortunes and there's no indication those people plan to give it all away in the style of Gates, Buffett, Zuckerberg, Scott, Carnegie, Rockefeller.

The US economy is about eight times larger than the French economy. If you expect that an economy eight times larger might produce something in the ballpark of fortunes eight times larger (one can apply a discount and it'll still be extreme), that wealth scale & concentration is mind-boggling large even by Bezos standards. Arnault's wealth might be like someone in the US being worth $712 billion in terms of how it towers over the economy and other wealth in the nation.

Germany has 34 of the top 500 fortunes in the world. 6.8% of the 500 richest, and Germany is slightly over 1% of the world's population, and about 4% of the global economy. Clearly they like their giant fortunes as much as the next affluent nation. And the Germans are notorious for their dynastic wealth as well, they have no problem passing down immense fortunes to the next generations.

(I'd do national share of global wealth for Germany, however that's a super messy batch of numbers, especially settling on even semi-accurate estimates for global wealth; it's still fairly interesting to see how their economy represents itself as part of the global share, and then how many top 500 fortunes that has produced.)

Sweden, with just ten million people, has 12 of the top 500 fortunes.

Russia - now infamous for their billionaire oligarchs - has 24 of the top 500 fortunes, while simultaneously having tens of millions of the poorest people in Europe.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#64

Post by brudgers »

growlist wrote: post #30
ethbr0 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be curious on any Brits' opinions on if this (failure to support revolutionary technology) happens more there, and if so then why. Recognize biases of hindsight, but it seems like private equity markets in Britain aren't interested in technology at the requisite scale. There's an incredible historical tradition [1], but the majority tend to be either developed with the help of a (1) few angel investors (and the…

I've come to the conclusion that many of the powerful in the UK view the nation primarily as a means for personal gain of one kind of another, and have no particular attachment to the UK's history, culture, and people, indeed, many of them seem to view the English (in particular) with barely disguised contempt.

Since 1066.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#65

Post by fluffything »

esperent wrote: post #22
fluffything wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They should have thought about what could happen _before_ selling ARM. TBH seeing them crying is sad and pathetic.

Who is "them" in your scenario? The entire British public? They didn't get a say in the matter. It was a small group of politicians and business folk. And as always, they are not the ones crying now because they made bank in the deal, no doubt.

The ARM co-founder that's complaining in this story about how the people they sold their ARM shares to are not respecting their feelings by re-selling ARM to the highest bidder?

Not sure how much money they made selling their stake on the company, but if Wikipedia's valuation for Acorn and ARM are correct, can't be more than a couple of million dollars.

Those shares would be worth many billions of dollars today.

---

Why do you think the brits have anything to do with anything?

If ARM ends up being bought by NVIDIA, that would actually be this Hermann Hauser's guy fault for selling ARM for pocket change. Complaining that their buyer's buyer's buyer now wants to make money with those shares by selling them to the highest bidder is sad. If ARM was so important to him, then maybe they shouldn't have sold their stake on it in the first place... Making a show about it now is like complaining that your ex that you dumped now has a new boyfriend.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#66

Post by valuearb »

rvz wrote: post #15

The UK is actually the one that has ignored and destroyed ARM (and Imagination Technologies) and it has been compared to 'selling off the crown jewels' [0] to SoftBank which was welcomed by a UK government cabinet minister in 2016 as a 'big vote of confidence in British business.' [1] Actually, SoftBank got ARM at a special Brexit discount. For them, they saw it as the best deal of 2016 and for the UK, you might as w…

SoftBank massively overpaid for ARM, you can say they got a Brexit markup.

There is almost no chance they make a profit on ARM.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#67

Post by ethbr0 »

someperson wrote: post #36
ethbr0 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best play would be to take the Intel approach: run ARM independently, and just build best-in-class integration with Nvidia GPUs / features. Substantial anti-trust concerns are avoided, while building exactly the moat you want: no competitor can afford to compete with the level of integration investment.

Why can't NVidia achieve this without spending tens of billions buying ARM?

You have a lot of options available when you own a company, that you don't have when they're independent.

Example: Nvidia would prefer certain specifications on an internal bus they'd use, but nobody else uses as a standard.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#68

Post by ethbr0 »

someperson wrote: post #34
growlist wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've come to the conclusion that many of the powerful in the UK view the nation primarily as a means for personal gain of one kind of another, and have no particular attachment to the UK's history, culture, and people, indeed, many of them seem to view the English (in particular) with barely disguised contempt.

This statement is meaningful even if you replace UK with US, but the US is still where most of the revolutionary technology comes from

The US does lack a tradition of monarchy and/or a hereditary landowning class. Which is probably not nothing in subsequent social evolutions.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#69

Post by adventured »

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #46
tcldr wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I attended a talk in the UK at Google Campus in London by Eric Schmidt. At the end of the talk there was some Q&A and one very apparently angry and frustrated member of the audience asked something along the lines of 'Do you think it's fair for Google and other big American Tech firms to keep buying up innovative and valuable British and European companies!?' Eric Schmidt immediately replied 'Well if you don't want u…

100x this! I think it's our fault as Europeans that we don't value and invest in tech enough. Why is it the US's fault that they consider tech to be valuable to their economy and national security and we don't? What's stopping us from doing the same? As long as we'll keep treating tech as some cost center instead of a core business while we keep pumping money to keep afloat 19th century industries who's ships have sa…

That's a difficult and slippery slope type problem. If the Europeans stop the US from acquiring companies there, the US ends up doing the same to European companies trying to acquire US assets.

We let Germany buy one of the most important companies on the planet in Monsanto. I consider Monsanto to be a national security level company, we should have never let it go. Seed & AG tech is critical for the coming century and Monsanto is one of the very few global giants.

For a long time we've been allowing European pharma giants to catch up in biotech by acquiring several of our important biotech companies, as with Genentech, Genzyme, Baxalta, MedImmune, Bioverativ and so on. We let Germany's Merck buy up Sigma-Aldrich. We let our medtech juggernaut, Medtronic, rebase to Ireland, no doubt taking important IP and jobs with it over time.

When I watch important US companies like Genzyme get consumed by a European company, I fully understand how the Europeans feel about ARM etc.

Re: Hermann Hauser: ‘It’s in Nvidia’s Interests to Destroy Arm’

#70

Post by ksec »

rvz wrote: post #15

The UK is actually the one that has ignored and destroyed ARM (and Imagination Technologies) and it has been compared to 'selling off the crown jewels' [0] to SoftBank which was welcomed by a UK government cabinet minister in 2016 as a 'big vote of confidence in British business.' [1] Actually, SoftBank got ARM at a special Brexit discount. For them, they saw it as the best deal of 2016 and for the UK, you might as w…

I am not sure I am reading this correctly?

>SoftBank got ARM at a special Brexit discount...

ARM was sold for $32B. It is easy to say they got a discount when even AMD is currently valued at $100B+ today. ( Yes.... the market is quite insane ) At the time many thought it was over priced, just like how WeWork was over priced.

ARM make less total revenue than Intel's Net Profits. And at the time, $32B was 100x + its Earning. And I would not be surprised it is still in the three digit times earning in 2020.

>So fast forward to 2020, SoftBank didn't get that 10x return

I am not sure if SB wanted 10x return. But surely no one sane was expecting it to be $320B.

You have RISC-V chipping away the bottom, low end embedded category, You have Qualcomm, ( or Had ) Huawei, Apple, Samsung representing ~80% of total Smartphone SoC Shipment. These four paid a one time license fees. I.e ARM could raise price for the next generation ARMv9, or current v8. But it wouldn't impact the big four. They could choose to stay with their current v8.

It was the same with Imagination Technologies. Yes I am bitter mostly because I think Apple lied. ( They are still using PowerVR technology. ) I guess we may never know the full story. And it was sold off to some Chinese Capital. But IMG was not without its faults. Buying MIPS? Seriously? Had they done it 5 years earlier it might have been a better move. But when they bought it most MIPS vendors ( Mostly in Networking ) already had plan to move platform to ARM counter part. IMG PowerVR was competing with ARM Mali which is much cheaper ( ARM's main focus is licensing their CPU iP ). I dont see IMG fighting for more IP licensing, it seems they were happy Apple is using their IP and wants to simply continue to do what is working. And they could have sold themselves to Apple. Probably for a better price than they did to Chinese VC.

I am not sure what is missing in the UK. But from a Strategic Perspective they are very often lacking vision and big picture. And that is especially true in Tech Industry.

Talents within the UK saw their leaders and management have absolutely dismal understanding and decide to go somewhere else, mainly US.

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