Imagine if it were somehow possible for a company like IBM to acquire the rights to direct Linux development and licensure, including the right to just refuse to let other Linux distribution vendors have access to new kernel features, or to price gouge them over updates, in an effort to squash all competition. Linux would continue to exist, but plenty of people who love what Linux had been would be saying, not without reason, that IBM had destroyed Linux.
Substantial anti-trust concerns are avoided, while building exactly the moat you want: no competitor can afford to compete with the level of integration investment.
Having some advantage may be worth the purchase.
Example: Nvidia would prefer certain specifications on an internal bus they'd use, but nobody else uses as a standard.
There doesn't appear to be sufficient profit margin in the industry for too many greenfield, non-reference custom implementations.
So if Nvidia-ARM sticks out a reference implementation or architecture choice that's beneficial to Nvidia, there's limited capability for others (Apple, Cavium/Marvell, Qualcomm, & Samsung?) to strike their own path, and they'll certainly be paying steeply to do so.
Thats if they keep ARM alive and mostly like it is for now at least.
Intel makes a lot more money as (a dominant) duopoly supplier of x86 than ARM will ever do licensing its IP.
So when Hauser talks about 'destroying' ARM he really means destroying the existing business model - and that will not necessarily mean flushing money down the drain. Rather it may mean making Nvidia a very profitable dominant supplier of ARM SoCs.