Arm Holdings plc

Designs the CPU architecture and chip blueprints licensed into most of the world's smartphones

What Arm does

Arm Holdings designs the instruction-set architecture and processor blueprints (IP) that other companies use to build their own chips. Arm doesn't manufacture silicon; instead its energy-efficient CPU, GPU and system designs are licensed to semiconductor firms and device makers — Apple, Qualcomm, Nvidia, Samsung and others — who build them into smartphones, tablets, cars, data-center servers and IoT devices.

How Arm makes money

Arm makes money two ways: upfront license fees when a customer gains access to an Arm design or architecture, and per-chip royalties collected every time a chip based on Arm IP is shipped. As more devices ship and designs move to newer, higher-value Arm architectures, royalty revenue compounds — a classic IP-licensing model with very high gross margins.

Products & services

• Arm CPU cores (Cortex, Neoverse)
• Mali GPUs
• Arm architecture licenses
• Compute Subsystems (CSS)
• chip design IP