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SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

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Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#121

Post by somanyphotons »

jonas21 wrote: post #89
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Run by Masa who many consider an oracle because his placed massive bets years before other people and those bets have paid of big. I'm not sure how many folks these days would consider him an "oracle". He clearly did fabulously well with some early Internet investments, but he also was famous for folly after folly of overpriced investments in the 2010s (the Softbank "Vision Funds"). I'd be curious if there is a sim…

They've made close to $100B on ARM (which they acquired in 2016). This dwarfs the $14B they lost on WeWork. Of course WeWork gets far more attention because it's a such an entertaining story.

These aren't realized gains though, I think only 10% of shares actually float, it's not clear that the demand would sustain in a selloff

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#122

Post by bobthepanda »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #84
alberth wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a VC. But it's so big (maybe biggest in the world), so its reach and influence is immense. And as a result, it has raised money from nations and other enormous entities. Run by Masa who many consider an oracle because his placed massive bets years before other people and those bets have paid of big.

> Run by Masa who many consider an oracle because his placed massive bets years before other people and those bets have paid of big. I'm not sure how many folks these days would consider him an "oracle". He clearly did fabulously well with some early Internet investments, but he also was famous for folly after folly of overpriced investments in the 2010s (the Softbank "Vision Funds"). I'd be curious if there is a sim…

It realized $5.6B in gains on Uber. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/08/08/softbank-sells-entire-stake-...

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#123

Post by IshKebab »

_huayra_ wrote: post #71
jsheard wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're the only company selling server grade ARM chips but others are rolling their own for internal use, such as Amazons Graviton line. That's Ampere's problem really, their biggest potential customers are so big that they can afford to cut out middlemen like Ampere.

Even if Ampere could afford to undercut the internal development of these hyperscalar ARM chips (which to my knowledge they cannot), there is more value in in-housing ARM chips like Amazon / Microsoft are doing: you can more easily try out wacky ideas in chip / firmware design. Often times these companies might have an idea for how to save power / tweak cores in a weird way on a CPU, but have a chicken-and-egg proble…

Yeah and you can solve exactly your problems without worrying about anyone else.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#125

Post by uxp100 »

caycep wrote: post #119
flakiness wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's so un-Japanese. See what the Japanese government (or old power in Japan) has been spending the money on recently: - Honda-Nissan merger (failed) - Seven Eleven counter buyout https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/the-fight-for-7-eleven-i... Masayoshi Son is in a different league, for good or bad.

I think he is Korean, that may account for the cultural differences

Yes, Ethnically Korean, his grandparents were immigrants. As for cultural differences, I think you could credit his extensive time spent living in the US as much as the immigrant Korean culture.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#126

Post by ksec »

kcb wrote: post #95
jauntywundrkind wrote: post #2

Ampere is still the only people making a decent purchaseable ARM server. Not loving the idea of there being a bunch of new debt hovering over them now.

You can buy Nvidia Grace CPU only systems. Neoverse V2 is actually pretty solid. https://www.supermicro.com/datasheet/datasheet-NVIDIA-MGX-1U...

Nvidia is targeting AI specific or fastest single core performance . While Ampere are targeting general Web CPU usage which is larger number of core per socket. The two are very different. I would have like Nvidia to enter this space as well but they seems to be focusing on everything AI related at the moment.

Or there are some specific workload on web that their CPU benefits and get filtered across ( DB hosting for example ) rather than going into a separate market for general usage.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#127

Post by alephnerd »

alephnerd wrote: post #36
zoobab wrote: post #35

Softbank is BigOil money.

Wrong. It's telco money - SoftBank Group is primarily a telco vendor and provider, and works closely with NEC, DoCoMo, T-Mobile, Vodafone, and Airtel. SoftBank Vision Fund is a separate subgroup of SoftBank targeted at VC, and was largely operated and managed by ex-Deustche Bank alumni due to Rajeev Misra and Colin Fan poaching their colleagues like Ziyad Al-Ashaikh (the guy who helped land the Saudi PIF deal), Aksha…

^ Munish not Munich

Sorry dude!

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#128

Post by flakiness »

alephnerd wrote: post #114
flakiness wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it's so un-Japanese. See what the Japanese government (or old power in Japan) has been spending the money on recently: - Honda-Nissan merger (failed) - Seven Eleven counter buyout https://www.wsj.com/business/retail/the-fight-for-7-eleven-i... Masayoshi Son is in a different league, for good or bad.

> old power in Japan) has been spending the money on recently Investing in SoftBank. MUFG, the Custody Bank, and Master Trust all have significant ownership stakes in SoftBank, and most Japanese conglomerates like NTT, NEC, etc tend to work closely with SoftBank on strategic deals

Wow I thought the Softbank money came from mostly overseas. Good to know. (Drop me some reference links if you don't mind.)

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#129

Post by geerlingguy »

jsheard wrote: post #97
wmf wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Ampere's only customers appear to be Oracle Cloud and some hobbyists. I was kind of expecting Oracle to buy them.

Hetzner offers Ampere boxes too, but they're not exactly a hyperscaler.

Azure also has Ampere, and they're used a good amount in Telco.

Re: SoftBank Group to Acquire Ampere Computing for 6.5B

#130

Post by danpalmer »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #84
alberth wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just a VC. But it's so big (maybe biggest in the world), so its reach and influence is immense. And as a result, it has raised money from nations and other enormous entities. Run by Masa who many consider an oracle because his placed massive bets years before other people and those bets have paid of big.

> Run by Masa who many consider an oracle because his placed massive bets years before other people and those bets have paid of big. I'm not sure how many folks these days would consider him an "oracle". He clearly did fabulously well with some early Internet investments, but he also was famous for folly after folly of overpriced investments in the 2010s (the Softbank "Vision Funds"). I'd be curious if there is a sim…

Arguably this is classic VC maths, bet on many companies and the few that succeed will succeed enough that the rest don't matter.

YC does the same thing at the very early stage, A16Z and Sequoia do the same at later stages, and arguably Softbank made their money doing the same thing at a later stage again, although all the lines are a little blurred.

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