The Financial Times also reported that the launch of Arm’s own chip is one step in a larger plan by SoftBank’s founder Masayoshi Son to make more money from its own intellectual property by moving into AI chip production and building a vast infrastructure network for artificial intelligence.
Last month, Son unveiled his Stargate initiative with OpenAI, which will spend an estimated £400bn building AI infrastructure, with Abu Dhabi state fund MGX and Oracle also providing funding, and Arm as a key technology partner alongside Microsoft and Nvidia.
More than 300bn chips based on Arm designs have been shipped since the company was founded in 1990, with almost all the world’s smartphones being based on Arm technology.
Another deal integral to Arm’s chipmaking project is Softbank’s expected acquisition of Ampere, an Oracle-backed chip designer of Arm-based chips for servers that could be valued at close to $6.5bn (£5.15bn).
Arm’s chip is expected to be a central processing unit (CPU) for servers in large datacentres and customisable for clients including Meta, according to those familiar with the plans.
