According to those familiar with the transaction, it could end up as the largest semiconductor deal in history. The sources cited by Bloomberg say that there is no guarantee that Nvidia will end up acquiring ARM as other bidders could surface and SoftBank could decide to spin off ARM and have it publicly traded on major stock exchanges. New Street Research LLP says that the company could be worth $44 billion if it pursues a public offering and might achieve a valuation as high as $68 billion by 2025. That’s because ARM’s technology and designs are used on connected devices, networking equipment, and more.

SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son has recently started selling off some of its tech pieces including a large stake in T-Mobile. SoftBank purchased 78% of Sprint in 2013 after beating out Dish Network for the carrier. It received the T-Mobile stake in the latter’s merger with Sprint. Son originally had high hopes for ARM saying at the time of its purchase by SoftBank that the acquisition of the British company was, “one of the most important acquisitions” that he had ever made. The two companies worked out a plan to increase spending on chip designs and on new hirings essentially expanding and investing in the company before slowing down the process ahead of returning to the public stock markets.

A phone manufacturer like Apple would face plenty of scrutiny by regulatory agencies if it made a play for ARM, especially the ones that deal with antitrust issues. God knows that with the App Store at the center of an investigation, this would be the last thing that Apple needs at the moment. Other companies using ARM’s architecture would oppose its purchase by a rival handset producer. There would be concerns about whether an acquirer would continue to allow rivals to access to ARM’s instruction set. Simply put, the latter is what gives the CPU directions and gives it tasks to do.

It might be hard for SoftBank to find a buyer for ARM although Nvidia’s interest appears to be serious.