Arm is reportedly set to launch its first AI chip next year.
According to a report from Nikkei Asia, the UK-based chipmaker is creating an AI chip division with the aim of producing a prototype product by Spring 2025. Mass production of the new chips is expected to start in the Fall of that same year.
SoftBank, the Japanese conglomerate that bought Arm in 2016 for $32 billion and owns a 90 percent stake in the company, is reportedly already negotiating with TSMC and other unnamed companies in order to secure production capacity.
It’s expected that Arm will cover the majority of the initial development costs, which Nikkei reported could reach hundreds of billions of yen (hundreds of millions of US dollars). If the venture is successful, the division could potentially be spun out from Arm and placed directly under its parent company.
Since SoftBank took Arm public in 2023, shares in the chipmaker have risen by almost 50 percent, with the biggest growth occurring after the company announced earlier this year that it would be looking to further support AI applications.
Last week it was reported that SoftBank was in talks to acquire struggling UK AI chip maker Graphcore, although a final deal is not expected to be reached imminently.
Separately, it has previously been reported that SoftBank’s founder Masayoshi Son was looking to raise $100 billion to build an AI chip venture dubbed Izanagi to compete with Nvidia.
On May 8, Arm posted its Q4 2024 financial results, which saw the company achieve fourth-quarter revenue of $928 million, a 47 percent year-over-year rise. This was largely driven by the company’s licensing business which saw 60 percent growth during the quarter.
In a letter to shareholders, the company attributed the double-digit growth in this segment to “multiple high-value agreements and the increased demand for Arm’s power-efficient technology for AI from data centers to Edge computing.”
