Feb 14, 2025 11:46:00

Arm could launch its own chips and upend the semiconductor industry, Meta could be first customer

Arm, a fabless company under SoftBank that is known for licensing its CPU

architecture to technology companies such as Apple and NVIDIA, has reportedly been poised to release its own chips as soon as 2025.

Arm to launch its own chip in move that could upend semiconductor industry
https://www.ft.com/content/95367b2b-2aa7-4a06-bdd3-0463c9bad008

Arm is launching its own chip this year with Meta as a customer | TechCrunch
https://techcrunch.com/2025/02/13/arm-is-launching-its-own-chip-this-year-with-meta-as-a-customer/

The Financial Times reported that Arm CEO Rene Haas plans to unveil its first in-house manufactured chips as early as the summer of 2025, citing a source familiar with the company's plans.

Arm has made its living by designing and licensing CPU architectures. But now it plans to manufacture its own chips using the ARM architecture. Regarding Arm's bold business model change, the Financial Times pointed out that 'it could upend the balance of power in the $700 billion semiconductor industry and put Arm in competition with some of its biggest customers.'

Masayoshi Son, CEO of Arm's parent company SoftBank, has made Arm the centerpiece of his plans to build a massive infrastructure network for AI. The launch of Arm's own chips is just one part of Son's larger plan to 'enter into AI chip manufacturing,' according to people familiar with the plans.

Son announced the 'Stargate' project in January 2025 to build a new AI infrastructure in the United States in collaboration with OpenAI. Arm, a subsidiary of SoftBank, is a major technology partner of Stargate along with Microsoft and NVIDIA.

OpenAI and SoftBank announce 'Stargate' project to establish AI data center with investment of over 70 trillion yen - GIGAZINE

Arm's first proprietary chip will be the CPU used in large-scale data center servers, and Meta and others are likely to be its first customers. The manufacturing of the chip itself will be outsourced to TSMC and others. Meta will be the first major technology company to adopt Arm's proprietary chips instead of server chips provided by Intel and AMD.

SoftBank plans to acquire Oracle-backed Arm-based server chip designer Ampere, which is estimated to be worth around $6.5 billion. According to reports, SoftBank's acquisition of Ampere will make it the core of Arm's own chip development project.

Arm's shares soared by more than 6% following the Financial Times' report.