Nvidia has sold its entire remaining stake in ARM Holdings, according to a regulatory filing submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, February 18, 2026.
The company sold roughly 1.1 million ARM shares worth approximately $140 million based on ARM’s closing price at the time of disclosure, ultimately bringing Nvidia’s stake to zero.
From a $40 Billion Bid to Zero Shares
The story behind this divestment goes back to 2020, when Nvidia moved to purchase ARM Holdings for $40 billion, a deal that, had it gone through, would have been one of the largest semiconductor acquisitions ever recorded. ARM’s majority shareholder, SoftBank, approved the deal. Nvidia pledged to maintain ARM’s existing licensing model and continue working with its wide network of commercial partners.
However, there was pushback from many companies including Samsung, Qualcomm, and Apple, where they raised concerns about anti-competitiveness with regulators. Following this, authorities in the UK and EU announced formal investigations in early 2021, which then led to the deal falling apart in 2022 after regulators in the U.S., UK, and EU collectively blocked it.
Nvidia paid a $1.25 billion exit fee as a result. SoftBank then took ARM public on the Nasdaq in 2023, valuing the company at just under $55 billion at the time of listing. ARM’s market cap now stands at approximately $133–135 billion.
How Nvidia Came to Hold the Shares
When ARM debuted on the Nasdaq in 2023, Nvidia was among a group of strategic investors that collectively purchased $735 million of ARM shares. Nvidia’s position at that point carried both financial and symbolic weight, as it was seen as an endorsement of ARM’s standalone trajectory after the failed acquisition.
By 2024, Nvidia held 1.96 million ARM shares worth approximately $280 million. In February 2025, it reduced that holding to 1.1 million shares, and in Q4 2025, it sold off the remainder. The full exit was only confirmed publicly when the SEC filing became available.
The Partnership Continues Despite the Sale
The share sale does not end the working relationship between the two companies. Following the collapse of the acquisition bid in 2022, Nvidia retained its 20-year license with ARM, with CEO Jensen Huang stating at the time that the company would “continue to support ARM as a proud licensee for decades to come.”
That relationship remains active. Nvidia’s Grace CPUs and Grace Hopper superchip, which form a central part of its AI hardware lineup, are built on ARM technology. The company is also expected to continue using ARM architecture in products like the DGX Spark and the rumored N1X chip.
What Nvidia Is Investing in Instead
Nvidia’s current SEC filings show it holds major stakes in CoreWeave, Intel, Nebius, Nokia, and Synopsys. The company invested $1 billion in telecom firm Nokia in October 2025, and invested an additional $2 billion into CoreWeave in January 2026. These moves reflect Nvidia’s focus on AI infrastructure and compute partnerships rather than chip architecture ownership.
Analysts largely view the ARM divestment as a clean, disciplined reset, more about capital allocation and portfolio management than any cooling toward ARM’s technology. Nvidia can still access ARM’s architecture through its long-term licensing agreement, meaning ownership of shares was no longer necessary to preserve that relationship.
ARM shares ticked more than 1% higher following the disclosure, while Nvidia shares also climbed on the same day.
