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This is the second major company in past few years where SoftBank pretty much served as an intermediary for merging of companies. They bought Sprint a few years ago and merged it with T-Mobile. Now they are selling ARM, which they bought just 4 years ago, to NVDA. Wonder if this was their plan all along or if they had to change plans due to financial issues or if they faced regulatory/geopolitical issues.

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Isn't this the standard private equity playbook? Buy, hold, and flip? Though Softbank isn't a VC and I haven't heard of mass cost-cutting after they buy something.

Private equity would take on a lot of debt, pay themselves bonuses, then flip the company.

VCs actually don't do that, though. VCs invest earlier and usually for a smaller, non controlling stake.

PEs do the buy complete company, often through an LBO, "restructure", flip for a profit.

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