After securing the meta contract, Arm unveils its own chip launch

The UK semiconductor designer ARM reportedly plans to launch its own chip this year after landing Meta as one of its first customers.

The move represents a massive overhaul of the SoftBank-owned group’s business model, licensing chip blueprints to Apple and Nvidia.

ARM CEO Rene Haas is set to announce its first in-house chip as early as this summer, according to a Financial Times report citing people familiar with the plan.

Since the company was founded in 1990, more than 300 million chips have been shipped based on ARM design, and almost all world smartphones are based on ARM technology. Moving from chip design to manufacturing a full, proprietary processor could also compete with the largest customers in the £500 million semiconductor industry.

ARM declined to comment. The company’s shares rose more than 6% on Thursday after finance reported its plans.

Financial Times also has its own intellectual property by creating a vast infrastructure network for AI, which has shifted to the production of AI chips by the son of SoftBank founder Masayoshi, and building a vast infrastructure network for artificial intelligence. It reported that it is one step in a big plan to make more money from.

Last month, Son announced its Stargate initiative at Openai. It spends an estimated £400 million building AI infrastructure, funded by Abu Dhabi State Fund MGX and Oracle, and is armed as a major technology partner alongside Microsoft and Nvidia.

According to those familiar with the plan, ARM’s chips are the central processing units (CPUs) of servers in large data centers and are expected to be customizable for clients, including Meta. These people said production will be outsourced to manufacturers such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.

Another transaction essential to ARM’s chipmaking project is SoftBank’s anticipated acquisition of Ampere. It could be valued at nearly $6.5 billion (£5.155 billion).

Cambridge Headquarted Arm has more than doubled to $173 million since it was listed on the Nasdaq in 2023. Before SoftBank took over it in 2016, ARM was previously listed in London.

Meta is the latest big tech company that looks to ARM for power-efficient server chips instead of Intel and AMD. Meanwhile, ARM’s Nvidia partnership with Amazon has driven the rapid growth of data centers that power Openai, Meta, and human AI assistants.