Rumors had been swirling that Ampere Computing was up for grabs, in parallel with Arm’s expected move into making its own CPUs – treading on the toes of its customers. With SoftBank Group buying Ampere for $6.5 billion, Ampere becomes a sister company of Arm, with the mate’s rates licensing for the Arm designs likely to help improve uptake of Ampere’s data center processors. We spoke to Ampere’s Chief Product Officer, Jeff Wittich, at MWC, hoping to draw him on those Arm-buying-Ampere rumors. Wittich did not bite, but did note he was skeptical of the AI-RAN pitch. SoftBank, however, is all in on AI – especially its application in the MNO radio access networks. The all-cash deal will see Carlyle…