March 19 (Reuters) - SoftBank Group Corp said

on Wednesday it would acquire Ampere Computing, a U.S. chip

startup founded by the former president of Intel ( INTC ) that

is increasingly focused on artificial intelligence, in a $6.5

billion all-cash deal.

Ampere makes data center central processing unit (CPU) chips

based on a computing architecture from Arm Holdings that

are used by firms such as Oracle in their cloud

computing infrastructure.

As part of the deal, Ampere's biggest investors, Oracle and

Carlyle Group ( CG ), will sell their respective positions in

the company, SoftBank said in a statement.

Founded in 2018 by Intel ( INTC ) veteran Renee James, Ampere built

CPUs with its own custom computing core technology, a step

usually only taken by much larger firms like Apple ( AAPL ) or

Qualcomm ( QCOM ).

But Arm ultimately became a competitor as it sought to work

directly with customers such as Microsoft ( MSFT ) and Google

to help them build their own custom Arm-based CPUs.

Google had adopted Ampere's chips, but a year later after

Google worked with Arm to develop its own "Axon" CPU, a Google

executive told Reuters it would not be deploying more Ampere

chips.

Under SoftBank's ownership, Ampere will be a stable mate of

Arm in the Japanese conglomerate's growing collection of chip

technology companies that are boosting their focus on AI.

SoftBank is the majority owner of Arm.

"With a shared vision for advancing AI, we are excited to

join SoftBank Group and partner with its portfolio of leading

technology companies," James said in a statement. "This is a

fantastic outcome for our team, and we are excited to drive

forward our AmpereOne roadmap for high performance Arm

processors and AI."