Following the recent news that the European Union (EU) antitrust regulators have approved NVIDIA Corp’s (Nvidia) acquisition of semiconductor company Mellanox Technologies (Mellanox) for US$6.8bn, which is the biggest-ever acquisition by Nvidia, signifying the importance of the acquisition for the company;

Aurojyoti Bose, Lead Analyst at GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company, offers his view on the regulatory hurdles around the acquisition:

“The acquisition will combine two leading high performance computing companies in the world with the combined entity powering more than 250 of the TOP500 supercomputers globally. Through this acquisition, Nvidia will gain access to Mellanox’s InfiniBand networking technology and expand its data center and artificial intelligence (AI) businesses.

“The deal required approvals from the US, the EU and Chinese regulators, and the companies initially expected to get all requisite approvals and close the deal by the end of 2019. However, regulatory hurdles are taking more time than anticipated.

“Prior to the receipt of approval from the EU antitrust regulators, the deal has already received approval from the US regulatory authorities. However, approval from Chinese authorities is still pending, which is required as Mellanox has significant customer base in China.

“The progress so far has been encouraging, but with uncertainties around gaining approval from Chinese authorities and the completion of the deal intensifying amidst the ongoing US-China trade war, it’s unlikely to close until early 2020.”