It will follow with up to a further $5bn in cash or stock if certain targets are met. Nvidia will also issue $1.5bn in equity to ARM's employees. But experts say one risk Nvidia faces is that the takeover could encourage ARM's wider client list to shift focus to a rival type of chip technology, which lags behind in terms of adoption but has the benefit of not being controlled by one company. ARM is facing growing competition from RISC-V, an open-source architecture, wrote CCS Insight's Geoff Blaber in a recent research note. If its partners believed that ARM's integrity and independence was compromised, it would accelerate the growth of RISC-V and in the process devalue ARM. Mr Blaber also suggested regulators might block the deal. This process will take months if not years with a high chance of failure, he told the BBC. Mr Huang has said that he expects it to take more than a year to educate regulators and answer all their questions, but said he had every confidence they would ultimately approve Softbank made commitments to secure jobs and keep ARM's headquarters in the UK until September next year. So far, when you read the announcement coming from Nvidia they said they will honour that Softbank has made at the time, said Sonja Laud, chief investment officer at Legal & General Investment Management. But with the expiry about to happen and obviously the Brexit negotiations under way it will be very interesting to see how this develops in the future. This appears to address concerns that British jobs would be lost and decision-making shifted to the US. Last week, the Labour Party had urged the government to intervene. But two of ARM's co-founders have raised other issues about the takeover. Hermann Hauser and Tudor Brown had suggested ARM should remain neutral, rather than be owned by a company like Nvidia, which produces its own processors. The concern is that there would be a conflict of interest since ARM's clients would become dependent on a business with which many also compete for sales. Moreover, the two co-founders also claimed that once ARM was owned by an American firm, Washington could try to block Chinese companies from using its knowhow as part of a wider trade clash between the countries.