Arm

Arm Holdings designs and licenses the CPU instruction-set architecture used in virtually every smartphone and, increasingly, in AI data-center processors. Rather than making chips, it licenses designs and its instruction set to the entire industry — including NVIDIA's Grace CPUs and the custom server chips built by Amazon, Google, and Microsoft. Majority-owned by SoftBank, Arm sits at the center of the shift toward energy-efficient AI infrastructure.

Founded in 1990 in Cambridge, England, Arm built a business model unlike any other chipmaker: it designs processor cores and architectures and licenses them, collecting royalties on the tens of billions of Arm-based chips shipped each year. Its power efficiency made it the standard for mobile and embedded computing.

That efficiency now matters in the data center, where power is the binding constraint on AI buildout. Arm-based server CPUs — Amazon's Graviton, NVIDIA's Grace, Google's Axion, Microsoft's Cobalt — pair with accelerators to reduce total power draw, and Arm has signaled ambitions to offer more complete compute subsystems.

SoftBank acquired Arm in 2016 and took it public again in 2023 while retaining majority control, making Arm a cornerstone of SoftBank's broader AI strategy alongside its stakes in OpenAI and the Stargate program. Its neutrality — licensing to competitors who build rival chips — keeps it embedded across the whole industry.