Nvidia wants to buy Arm

US chipmaker Qualcomm has expressed its opposition to a possible acquisition of Arm by Nvidia, which last September said it was prepared to pay $40 billion in the deal.

Nvidia's purchase of Arm must be approved by regulators around the world to close the deal. Qualcomm has filed protests with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the European Commission (EC), the UK Competition and Markets Authority and China's State Administration for Market Regulation.

Qualcomm believes that if it buys Arm, Nvidia would prevent other chipmakers from using Arm's intellectual property. This could be a problem for the more than 500 companies that license Arm's technology to make their own chips. The ARM architecture is used in 95% of the world's smartphones and 95% of the chips developed in China. Qualcomm is concerned that Nvidia won't be able to avoid overstepping some boundaries after the acquisition.

Several industry sources and two technology investors have said that there is a good chance that the deal will be blocked by at least one regulatory body. Nvidia, on the other hand, said it was confident of regulatory approval of the deal.

In addition to Qualcomm, UK-based artificial intelligence chip maker Graphcore has also complained to the UK Competition and Markets Authority about the impending deal. CEO Nigel Toon told CNBC in December that he believes the deal is anti-competitive.

Google and Microsoft also oppose the acquisition.