Arm Holdings

Arm Holdings plc
Formerly
  • Widelogic Limited (1990)
  • Advanced RISC Machines Limited (1990–1998)
Company typePublic subsidiary
IndustrySemiconductors
Founded27 November 1990; 33 years ago (1990-11-27)[1]
FoundersJamie Urquhart, Mike Muller, Tudor Brown, Lee Smith, John Biggs, Harry Oldham, Dave Howard, Pete Harrod, Harry Meekings, Al Thomas, Andy Merritt, David Seal[2]
HeadquartersCambridge, England, UK
Key people
ProductsMicroprocessor designs, graphics processing unit (GPU) designs and neural processing unit (NPU) designs[3]
RevenueIncrease US$3.23 billion (2024)
Decrease US$111 million (2024)
Decrease US$306 million (2024)
Total assetsIncrease US$7.93 billion (2024)
Total equityIncrease US$5.29 billion (2024)
Number of employees
7,096 (2024)[4]
ParentSoftBank Group (88%)[4]
Websitearm.com
Footnotes / references
Financials as of 31 March 2024.[5]

Arm Holdings plc (formerly an acronym for Advanced RISC Machines and originally Acorn RISC Machine) is a British semiconductor and software design company based in Cambridge, England, whose primary business is the design of central processing unit (CPU) cores that implement the ARM architecture family of instruction sets. It also designs other chips, provides software development tools under the DS-5, RealView and Keil brands, and provides systems and platforms, system-on-a-chip (SoC) infrastructure and software. As a "holding" company, it also holds shares of other companies. Since 2016, it has been majority owned by Japanese conglomerate SoftBank Group.

While ARM CPUs first appeared in the Acorn Archimedes, a desktop computer, today's systems include mostly embedded systems, including ARM CPUs used in virtually all modern smartphones. Processors based on designs licensed from Arm, or designed by licensees of one of the ARM instruction set architectures, are used in all classes of computing devices. Arm has two lines of graphics processing units (GPUs), Mali, and the newer Immortalis (which includes hardware-based ray-tracing).[6]

Arm's main CPU competitors in servers include IBM, Intel and AMD.[7] Intel competed with ARM-based chips in mobile but Arm no longer has any competition in that space (however, vendors of actual ARM-based chips compete within that space). Arm's main GPU competitors include mobile GPUs from technology companies Imagination Technologies (PowerVR), Qualcomm (Adreno), and increasingly Nvidia, AMD, Samsung and Intel. While competing in GPUs, Qualcomm, Samsung and Nvidia all have combined their GPUs with Arm-licensed CPUs.

Arm had a primary listing on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and was a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. It also had a secondary listing of American depositary receipts on New York's Nasdaq. However Japanese multinational conglomerate SoftBank Group made an agreed offer for Arm on 18 July 2016, subject to approval by Arm's shareholders, valuing the company at £24.3 billion.[8][9] The transaction was completed on 5 September 2016.[10][11] A planned takeover deal by Nvidia, announced in 2020, collapsed in February 2022,[12] with SoftBank subsequently deciding to pursue an initial public offering on the Nasdaq in 2023, valuing Arm at US$54.5 billion.[13]

  1. ^ "ARM's first press release" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 January 2016. Retrieved 19 November 2015.
  2. ^ Saxby, Robin (23 November 2006). "Chips With Everything". Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 December 2014. Retrieved 27 May 2011.
  3. ^ "IP Products | Machine Learning". ARM Developer. Retrieved 12 April 2020.
  4. ^ a b "Arm Holdings Ltd. FY 2024 Annual Report (Form 20-F)". U.S Securities and Exchange Commission. 29 May 2024. pp. 111, 113.
  5. ^ "Results for quarter ending March 31, 2024". ARM. 8 May 2024.
  6. ^ Schoon, Ben (28 June 2022). "Arm's new Immortalis GPU sets the stage for more Android phones with ray-tracing support". 9to5Google. Retrieved 7 July 2022.
  7. ^ Merritt, Rick (30 May 2016). "Cavium Flexes ARM Server Upgrade".
  8. ^ "ARM chip designer to be bought by Japan's Softbank". BBC News. 18 July 2016. Retrieved 7 July 2022.
  9. ^ "SoftBank Offers to Acquire ARM Holdings for GBP 24.3 Billion (USD 31.4 Billion) in Cash". Business Wire (Press release). 18 July 2016. Retrieved 14 September 2023.
  10. ^ "SoftBank finally completes £24bn ARM takeover". Silicon Republic. 5 December 2016. Retrieved 5 September 2016.
  11. ^ "Acquisition of ARM Holdings plc. by SoftBank Group Corp". silver.arm.com.
  12. ^ "Nvidia's $40bn takeover of UK chip designer Arm collapses". the Guardian. 8 February 2022. Retrieved 8 February 2022.
  13. ^ "Chip giant Arm raises nearly $5 billion in year's largest IPO". Axios. Retrieved 14 September 2023.