SoftBank Group is moving deeper into the hardware layer of artificial intelligence with a planned acquisition of Ampere Computing, the Santa Clara, California, chip designer founded by Renee James.
The company announced on Wednesday that it will buy Ampere through a $6.5 billion all-cash deal. After the transaction closes, Ampere is expected to operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank. The deal is expected to close in the second half of 2025.
A chip deal built around AI infrastructure
SoftBank described the Ampere acquisition as a strategic move to expand its investment in AI infrastructure. That framing matters because AI systems depend not only on models and software, but also on the computing platforms that run them.
Ampere gives SoftBank a direct stake in semiconductor design for high-performance computing. The startup has developed a server chip based on the ARM compute platform, placing it close to another major SoftBank asset: Arm Holdings.
SoftBank is the largest shareholder of Arm Holdings. It acquired British chip designer Arm for $32 billion in 2016, and Arm became publicly traded in 2023. Ampere’s work on Arm-based server chips therefore fits naturally into SoftBank’s existing position in compute architecture.
Masayoshi Son, chairman and CEO of SoftBank Group Corp., tied the deal directly to future computing demands. “The future of artificial super intelligence requires breakthrough computing power,” he said. “Ampere’s expertise in semiconductors and high-performance computing will help accelerate this vision and deepens our commitment to AI innovation in the United States.”
What SoftBank is buying
Ampere was founded in 2017 by James, who previously worked at Intel and private equity firm Carlyle and served on the board of Oracle. The company initially focused on cloud-native computing. It has since expanded its scope to include sustainable AI compute.
The acquisition would also bring a large engineering team into SoftBank. Ampere employs 1,000 semiconductor engineers, according to the source article. For a company trying to strengthen its role in AI and compute, that talent base is part of the strategic value.
Ampere’s customer list also shows why the company is relevant to large-scale infrastructure. Its customers include Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba, and Tencent, as well as companies like HPE and Supermicro.
Those customers sit across cloud services, enterprise hardware and global computing platforms. The source article does not say how each customer uses Ampere’s technology, but the list indicates that Ampere’s products are already connected to major infrastructure buyers and providers.
Investors are selling their stakes
Carlyle and Oracle, Ampere’s lead investors, will sell their shares in the startup as part of the deal. According to SoftBank’s statement, Carlyle holds a 59.65% stake while Oracle holds 32.27%.
The transaction also follows earlier reported interest from SoftBank. In 2021, SoftBank considered acquiring a minority stake in Ampere, which was then valued at $8 billion, per Bloomberg.
The new agreement is different in scale and control. Instead of a minority investment, SoftBank is pursuing full ownership. Ampere would continue operating under SoftBank as a wholly owned subsidiary after the deal closes.
How Ampere fits the wider SoftBank AI strategy
The Ampere announcement is not an isolated move. It follows a string of AI-related deals and projects by SoftBank over the past few months.
SoftBank has partnered with OpenAI to develop Advanced Enterprise AI called “Cristal intelligence.” It has also invested in the AI infrastructure project Stargate, which is building data centers for OpenAI across the U.S., and purchased an old Sharp factory in Japan.
Taken together, those moves point to a strategy that spans several layers of AI infrastructure:
- Compute design: Ampere’s semiconductor and high-performance computing expertise.
- Architecture exposure: SoftBank’s position as the largest shareholder of Arm Holdings.
- Data center infrastructure: the Stargate project building data centers for OpenAI across the U.S.
- Enterprise AI: the partnership with OpenAI around “Cristal intelligence.”
The source article does not describe a single integrated product roadmap across these efforts. Still, the logic is clear: AI growth requires more computing power, and SoftBank is positioning itself around companies and projects that provide or depend on that power.
What Ampere says comes next
For Ampere, the deal is presented as a way to continue its processor roadmap inside a larger technology portfolio. James framed the acquisition around a shared AI direction and the chance to work with SoftBank’s other companies.
“With a shared vision for advancing AI, we are excited to join SoftBank Group and partner with its portfolio of leading technology companies,” said James. “This is a fantastic outcome for our team, and we are excited to drive forward our AmpereOne roadmap for high-performance Arm processors and AI.”
The key point is that SoftBank is buying more than a chip startup. It is buying semiconductor expertise, an Arm-based server chip business, cloud and hardware customer relationships, and a team already focused on high-performance computing and AI compute.
If the deal closes as expected in the second half of 2025, Ampere will become one more piece of SoftBank’s broader bet that the next phase of AI will be shaped by infrastructure as much as by software.