The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has opened an in-depth investigation into SoftBank’s $6.5 billion acquisition of Ampere Computing, according to a report from Bloomberg.

No reason for the extended review, formally known as a second request for information, has been reported.

The probe has yet to be confirmed by the FTC, which, alongside Ampere and SoftBank, declined Bloomberg’s request for comment. Previous extended reviews carried out by the regulator have run for more than a year, putting a question mark over the closure date of the Ampere deal, which had been scheduled to conclude in the second half of 2025.

SoftBank announced its acquisition of Ampere in March 2025. Founded in 2017 by CEO Renée James and a group of her former Intel colleagues, Ampere designs server chips based on the Arm architecture but using its own custom cores. This gives it more control over the development of the chips, and reduces its licensing fees to Arm.

When the deal was announced, the company said Ampere will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of SoftBank Group and retain its name, operating separately to Arm, while lead investors Carlyle and Oracle will sell their stakes.

SoftBank is the single largest shareholder in UK-based Arm, having acquired the company for $32bn in 2016. In 2020, it announced plans to sell Arm to Nvidia for $40bn, but the deal was ultimately scrapped after regulators in the US, UK, and Europe all launched in-depth antitrust probes into the deal.

Following the collapse of that deal, SoftBank took Arm public in August 2023.