Nvidia’s planned acquisition of the UK-based chip designer Arm from SoftBank has collapsed due to “significant regulatory challenges,” the companies said in a joint release Tuesday. The cash-and-stock deal was originally announced in 2020 and had a value at the time of $40 billion. It planned to bring together Nvidia’s AI computing platform with Arm’s vast ecosystem to create the “premier computing company for the age of artificial intelligence, accelerating innovation while expanding into large, high-growth markets.” Arm is the world’s leading semiconductor intellectual property company and its technology is used in everything from smartphones to tablets and computers, including Apple’s iPhones and Android devices running on Qualcomm chips. It counts nearly every major semiconductor company as a client. However, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued to block the billion-dollar acquisition in December last year, arguing that it would give “one of the largest chip companies control over the computing technology and designs that …