Semiconductor manufacturer NVIDIA has finally abandoned plans to acquire British microchip developer Arm from SoftBank Group for $66 billion, the Financial Times reports. NVIDIA’s board of directors made the decision at a meeting on Monday, February 7.

SoftBank and Arm are entitled to keep the $2 billion that NVIDIA paid when it signed the contract, including $1.25 billion in compensation for breaking the agreement. The potential buyer’s rejection of the takeover deprives SoftBank of a large profit that it could have realized from NVIDIA’s share price appreciation.

The buyer had planned to acquire Arm for cash and stock: in September 2020, the deal was valued at $38.5 billion, but after the stock price rally peaked in November, the amount nearly doubled. The takeover could be the biggest deal in the chip industry.

NVIDIA and SoftBank quotes did not react to the final rejection of the takeover plans. News about the possible breakdown of the deal to acquire the British company Arm from SoftBank appeared on January 25. Then NVIDIA shares were down almost 5%. The day before, at the end of trading on February 7, NVIDIA for the first time overtook Meta in terms of capitalization – $618.2 billion against $612.2 billion. Now the graphics processor manufacturer has become the seventh largest company in the United States.