The leading graphics processor company NVIDIA has reached an agreement to buy the British microprocessor company Arm Ltd. from the Japanese telecommunications holding SoftBank Group Corp. for $12 billion in cash and $21.5 billion in shares. The agreement provides for an additional $5 billion that SoftBank could receive under certain conditions and $1.5 billion for Arm employees for a total of 40 billion dollars. The operation is expected to close in 18 months.