In an impressive display of market performance, ARM Holdings, the British semiconductor and software design company, has almost doubled its market value in just under a week. This surge is largely attributed to the company’s financial results from last week, revealing an increasing demand for AI technology.
Since the announcement of these results, ARM’s shares have skyrocketed by approximately 98%. While ARM’s technology is not used directly in AI applications, its designs are integral to the chips produced by manufacturers such as Nvidia. ARM boasts a client roster that includes major industry players like Apple and the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), with its chips being a staple in virtually every smartphone.
Not just Apple and Nvidia, but other major chipmakers such as Qualcomm and MediaTek also use ARM’s cores in their SoCs, which span across most if not all smartphones in the modern day. Qualcomm’s Snapdragon chips are not only found in most smartphones but also power a large amount of laptops and handhelds.
MediaTek, on the other hand, is known for its Dimensity, Helio, and various other families of chips used in smartphones. The latest of these are also starting to bring on-device AI processing to the table, including Qualcomm’s offerings in Samsung’s Galaxy S24 and other devices.
ARM filed for an IPO in August last year and almost every notable tech giant took a slice of the company’s shares. The initial public offering was valued between $50 billion to $55 billion, 10% of which was set aside for partners, while its owner SoftBank will keep 90% of it.
The list of ARM’s partners now includes Nvidia, which tried to acquire ARM for $40 billion in 2020, though the deal fell through due to regulatory hurdles regarding fair competition.
Other industry giants on the list include companies that are heavily involved with ARM such as Apple, Samsung, Google’s owner Alphabet, as well as the two x86 giants Intel and AMD. Amazon had originally planned to invest in the company as well, but pulled its offer before the IPO, according to insiders familiar with the matter. Amazon Amazon designs Gravitron processors for AWS servers.
