Elon Musk Signals Competition Concerns Over Nvidia-Arm Deal: Report

Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk has signaled competition concerns over Nvidia’s planned purchase of British chip designer Arm, the Telegraph reported on Saturday, citing multiple sources.

E-commerce giant Amazon and smartphone maker Samsung have also lodged opposition to the deal with US authorities, the newspaper reported.

Earlier this year, the US Federal Trade Commission opened an in-depth probe into the takeover. The probe findings are expected in the coming weeks, according to the newspaper.

Tesla, Amazon, Samsung, and Nvidia did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Nvidia is likely to seek European Union antitrust approval for the $54 billion (roughly Rs. 3,96,910 crores) purchase of Arm early next month, with regulators expected to launch a full-scale investigation after a preliminary review, people familiar with the matter have said.

Last week, Musk said that Tesla was working on improving the much-awaited update to its self-driving software “as fast as possible.”

Musk tweeted that the Full Self-Driving Beta version 9.2 is “actually not great imo [in my opinion], but Autopilot/AI team is rallying to improve as fast as possible.”

“We’re trying to have a single stack for both highway & city streets, but it requires massive NN (neural network) retraining.”

Tesla had recently come under the scrutiny of US safety regulators, who opened an investigation into its driver assistant system because of 11 accidents where its cars crashed into stationary police cars and fire trucks.

The incidents dating back to 2018 included one fatal crash and seven that resulted in injuries to 17 people, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

The agency “is committed to ensuring the highest standards of safety on the nation’s roadways,” a spokesperson said, and in order to “better understand the causes of certain Tesla crashes, NHTSA is opening a preliminary evaluation into Tesla Autopilot systems.”