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#Summary: The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States approved the $2.3 billion sale of IBM's x86 server business to Chinese PC maker Lenovo.
Following a period of intense scrutiny fueled by national security concerns, US regulators have approved the $2.3 billion sale, which gives Lenovo control of IBM's x86 servers, blade networking and maintenance operations.
The deal received approval in China last month.
While IBM says the sale of its low-end server business will allow the company to focus on system and software innovations such as cognitive computing, Big Data and cloud infrastructure, security concerns have hovered over the deal since it was first announced back in January.
The main issue revolves around the sensitive deployments of the x86 servers – they are not only used in the nation's communications networks, but also within the data centers that run the Pentagon's computer network.
Lenovo will now maintain those deployments, as per the terms of the deal, which critics say could lead to weakened security via hackers or Chinese spies.
But obviously US regulators found the threat to be minimal, and IBM and Lenovo said in a press release that they look forward closing the transaction.
